The Invocation

Rick Warren has become a global religious celebrity by selling more than 30 million copies of “The Purpose Driven Life.” His Saddleback Church in California boasts weekly attendance of 20,000, and both Obama and John McCain made back-to-back appearances there last summer to answer Warren’s questions. But because of his opposition to gay marriage and abortion rights, liberals professed emotions ranging from annoyance to outrage when Warren was chosen by Obama to give the opening prayer. The incoming president said his decision was a reflection of his campaign promise to help Americans come together despite differing ideologies.

The Music

Aretha Franklin, the so-called Queen of Soul, is no stranger to Washington ceremony; in 1994, she became the youngest-ever recipient of the Kennedy Center Honors, and in 2005 Bush awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian award. But this is the first inauguration for the 21-time Grammy winner. When she campaigned for Obama at a Labor Day rally in her hometown of Detroit, he serenaded her with a few lines of her own. “He was grooving,” Franklin reported later, and she says she’s eager to return the compliment. Just before Obama takes the oath, a quartet of four of the world’s most prominent classical musicians — Itzhak Perlman on violin, Yo-Yo Ma on cello, Gabriela Montero on piano and Anthony McGill on clarinet — will perform an original work by the popular composer John Williams.

The Vice President’s Oath

Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. will be sworn in as the 49th vice president by the longest-serving current justice on the Supreme Court, 88-year-old John Paul Stevens , who was nominated by Ford in 1975. Biden may have the oath memorized, because it’s the same one administered to all federal officials — and so he’s taken it seven times to begin his terms as a senator from Delaware, most recently from Cheney in the Senate chamber last month. Since World War II, the vice president-elect has been allowed to choose who will administer his oath. Most have chosen associate justices nominated by presidents of their own party, but Cheney broke the tradition twice, picking Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist in 2001 and House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert in 2005.

The Moment

This much is by now obvious, but it must be stated — simply, but for the annals of world history: No African-American has ever before become the president of the United States. But for all the centuries of oppression and prejudice that fact may start to sweep away, the actual moment will be essentially identical to all that have gone before. Barack Hussein Obama will repeat the 37 words prescribed by the Constitution: “I do solemnly swear [or affirm] that I will faithfully execute the office of president of the United States, and will to the best of my ability preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.” There is no constitutional decree on who administers the oath, but the chief justice of the United States has done so in all but eight of the past 64 inaugurations. This will be the first time for John G. Roberts Jr., who got the job in 2005. The new first lady’s role, holding the Bible for her husband, is a convention that began in 1965 with Lady Bird Johnson. The Bible to be used this time was purchased by the Clerk of the Supreme Court in 1861 for Lincoln’s first inaugural and is now in the custody of the Library of Congress.

The Symbols of Power

As soon as Obama declares the customary (but not required) “So help me God,” the sights and sounds will make it clear that the peaceful transfer of power has taken place in the United States one more time. The drum-and-bugle “Ruffles and Flourishes” followed by the official presidential march “Hail to the Chief” — which the Marines had played only a few minutes earlier for Bush — will be struck up for the first time to announce the presence of the 44th president of the United States. Then Obama will be accorded his first 21-gun salute by the howitzers of the 3rd Infantry, also known as The Old Guard. Far more quietly, the military officer who had arrived with Bush carrying the “football” — the specially outfitted black briefcase containing the launch codes for nuclear war — will cross the platform and position himself next to his new commander in chief.

The Speech

Most inaugurals have been at the Capitol, and the East Portico was the site of 34 such ceremonies. But the West Front has been the locale since 1981, when Ronald Reagan planned an inaugural befitting his reputation as the first “made-for-TV president.” Hoping to evoke Washington, Jefferson and Lincoln, the 40th president wanted to deliver his inaugural address from where he (and the people watching at home) could see all three of their monuments. The new location also increased the audience; upwards of 250,000 can fill the ticketed area at the base of Capitol Hill. But this year, inaugural planners have for the first time opened the entire Mall for non-ticket-holders, expecting Obama may deliver his inaugural address not only to a global TV audience but also to a throng stretching toward the Lincoln Memorial, two miles away. If modern precedent is a guide, his speech will last about 15 minutes, nowhere near the longest: William Henry Harrison’s 8,445-word opus of 1841, or the shortest, Washington’s 135 words at his second inaugural in 1793.

The Poem

A friend of Obama’s, Elizabeth Alexander, is expected to read a poem she has written for the occasion that focuses on the themes of race, gender and class for which she is known. Alexander is a Washington native and the incoming chairwoman of Yale University’s African American Studies Department. Only three other poets have read their work at an inauguration: Robert Frost for Kennedy and Maya Angelou in 1993 and Miller Williams in 1997 for Clinton.

The Benediction

Some of the controversy surrounding the choice of Warren to give the opening prayer has been mitigated by the choice of the Rev. Joseph E. Lowery to give the closing prayer. One of the last surviving icons of the civil rights movement, he helped organize the 1955 bus boycott in Montgomery, Ala., and co-founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference with Martin Luther King Jr. Now 87, Lowery’s said he never thought he’d live to see his prayers answered with the election of a black president.

The Departure

After the national anthem, the Obamas, Bushes, Bidens and Cheneys will walk back into the Capitol and ascend to the East Portico. A military honor guard will line the Capitol’s front steps as they descend onto the plaza, which is also the roof of the Capitol Visitor Center, the subterranean $621 million complex that opened last month. After handshakes all around, the Cheneys and Bushes will board a Marine helicopter and be carried over the crowds to Andrews Air Force Base. From there, the former president will be taken by the Air Force to a homecoming ceremony in Midland, Texas, while the former vice president will be taken to Casper, Wyo.

The Luncheon

The inaugural lunch tradition began in 1897, when William McKinley was treated to a corned beef sandwich and a cup of coffee in a Senate committee room. After that, big lunches at the White House were customary until 1953, when Congress began hosting a party in the Capitol’s Statuary Hall. This time, 200 guests including congressional leaders, Cabinet nominees, top White House officials, Supreme Court justices, the Obamas and the Bidens will dine on a menu designed to reflect the tastes of Abraham Lincoln in the bicentennial year of his birth: seafood stew, pheasant and duck served with sour cherry chutney, and an apple cinnamon sponge cake for dessert. The accompanying wines were chosen by Feinstein and, predictably, are from her home state: Duckhorn sauvignon blanc, Goldeneye pinot noir and a Korbel sparkler blended just for the luncheon. The tabletop flower arrangements will be taken later in the day to patients at Walter Reed Army Medical Center.

The Parade

Leading his inaugural parade from the Capitol to the White House, Obama and his family will travel slowly down the most history-laden mile in the country — past landmarks, and the ghosts of landmarks, that have led some to call this stretch of Pennsylvania Avenue the nation’s Main Street. Washington became a large city only after World War II, so its first century and a half was lived a few blocks north and south of what was then called “The Avenue.” There were vistas, of course, dominated to the east by the gleaming white Capitol on its hill and to the west by the classic facade of the Treasury — which since the middle of the 19th century has interrupted the view between the Capitol and the White House. But the boulevard itself has become monumental only within the past 30 years, with a conscious effort at redevelopment.

For most of its history, Pennsylvania Avenue was much like every other commercial thoroughfare in the country, except wider, which meant more dust and mud. It was lined with low brick or clapboard shops, bars, restaurants and hotels, and the occasional stable — a road both noisy and noisome. Everyone went there. A few days before the battle of Bull Run in 1861, British war correspondent William Howard Russell, who had pioneered his trade covering the Crimean War, spied President Lincoln “crossing Pennsylvania Avenue, striding like a crane in a bullrush swamp.”

The heart of the city lay on the north side of the street, where businesses were more upscale. Here were the better hotels and gathering places, such as Willard’s, where Lincoln stayed before his inauguration; theaters such as the National and Ford’s; Georgian homes of the wealthy; and rooming houses for members of Congress. Government officials, including Cabinet secretaries, tended to live within walking distance of, or a brief carriage ride from, work. Lafayette Square across from the president’s house was lined with large homes, a flavor it largely retained until the era of security barriers.

To the south, between Pennsylvania and Constitution avenues — what was then a fetid canal — lay the city’s seamier side, packed with saloons, cheap eateries, run-down boarding houses and bordellos. The area around today’s Union Station was also the site of a notorious 19th century slum called Swampoodle. At the base of Capitol Hill, the land was low and sometimes flooded when the city canal backed up. It was also noisy because the tracks of the Washington and Alexandria Railroad wound past what is today the Capitol reflecting pool, right through the area where people with tickets will stand to watch Obama sworn in.

By the late 1950s, with Washington sprawling to the north and west, the old downtown had largely gone to seed — so down at the heels that Kennedy, riding down the avenue after his inauguration in 1961, termed it “a disgrace” and issued one of his first presidential orders. “Fix it,” he told an aide. Twelve years later, Congress finally swung into action by creating the Pennsylvania Avenue Development Corp. to acquire property along the boulevard and resell it to developers while selectively preserving some landmarks, such as the Old Post Office — a Romanesque revival extravaganza that opened in 1983 as an indoor mall — and the Willard, where Civil War generals once traded news with reporters whose bureaus lined the adjoining 14th Street. It opened anew in 1986.