The Jefferson Highway runs straight into Iowa's biggest city, Des Moines.

Pull over at the golden dome for a tour of one of the grandest capitol buildings in the country.

My name is Joanie.

If you have questions, please ask.

There is no such thing as a silly question.

I want you to remember that this is your building.

You own it.

It belongs to you, belongs to me, belongs to your teachers, parents.

Everyone that lives in Iowa.

We own this building.

And you know what?

You have an unbelievable capitol.

♪♪ ♪♪ Some people want to see a lot of art.

Some people want to know how the government works.

Some people are wanting to enjoy different views of the capitol.

One of those views would be the ones way up high by the tall windows up there, what we call the whispering gallery, where you get to look back down into the capitol instead of always just looking up.

The people generally tend to just be awestruck by not only the art and so forth of the building, but just by the dimensions of the building.

It's huge.

It's more than a football field long and more than a softball field wide.

It just amazes people how beautiful our capitol is here in Iowa.

Joanie: Look straight up into the dome.

Did you look at the dome when you came in from the outside?

Yeah, you probably drive by it.

You probably see the dome of the capitol all the time.

The dome that you see from the outside is 275 feet tall.

Olson: On the exterior, we are the only state capitol, we're the only one with five domes.

Nobody else has five domes.

And we're also in another group of capitols with gold domes.

We are one of ten state capitols that has a gold dome.

The gold is very thin, 1/250,000 of an inch in thickness.

A sheet of paper is a thousand times thicker than the gold that we put on the gold dome.

Joanie: The gold on the outside is real gold.

It's 23 3/4-karat gold, so it's almost pure.

If you took all the gold off the outside of our dome and rolled it into a ball, you could hold it in your hand.

It would be about the size of a baseball, a little bit smaller.

♪♪ Our library is right here over the west end of the capitol.

Our law library has nothing but law books.

There are about 100,000 books there.

There are five separate levels of books.

And the levels are lined by these beautiful iron railings.

We're going to go upstairs and look in the House and the Senate.

Very, very different building when the representatives and senators are here working.

It's very crowded and very, very noisy.

This room is the biggest room in the building.

As you look around the Senate, you're going to see some of those same things that we talked about in the House of Representatives.

Our Constitution says they have to begin their work here the second Monday of January, but our Constitution does not say when they have to finish.

So, they finish whenever they feel their work is done.

Usually it's about the end of April or early part of May.

If you would come to the capitol building during those winter months, you would be able to come in here and listen to them while they work.

I just have to compliment you on what a great job you did today.

You were such good listeners.

I wish you would have asked more questions, but that's okay.

Olson: We tend to call the capitol the people's house.

It's also a place where we allow people to learn a lot more about Iowa history, and find that they do have a beautiful capitol, and that it is being well taken care of.