v t e Washington–Arlington–Alexandria, DC–VA–MD–WV metropolitan area
Principal cities (and city-like entities)	Maryland Silver Spring Frederick Rockville Bethesda Gaithersburg Virginia Arlington Alexandria Reston District of Columbia Washington
Counties (and county equivalents)	Maryland Calvert Charles Frederick Montgomery Prince George's Virginia Arlington Alexandria city Clarke Culpeper Fairfax Fairfax city Falls Church city Fauquier Loudoun Prince William Manassas city Manassas Park city Rappahannock Spotsylvania Fredericksburg city Stafford Warren District of Columbia Washington, D.C. itself Other Outlying Areas Jefferson County, West Virginia
See Also	Baltimore–Washington metropolitan area (CSA) Northeast megalopolis
The District of Columbia itself, and Virginia's incorporated cities, are county equivalents. Virginia's incorporated cities are listed under their surrounding county. The incorporated cities bordering more than one county (Alexandria, Falls Church and Fredericksburg) are listed under the county they were part of before incorporation as a city. Some unincorporated areas and census-designated places like Silver Spring and Bethesda in Maryland, Reston in Virginia, as well as the County of Arlington in Virginia are also treated as city-like entities (or principal cities) even though they have not been legally incorporated as such.

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• |state=collapsed: ((DCMetroArea|state=collapsed)) to show the template collapsed, i.e., hidden apart from its title bar
• |state=expanded: ((DCMetroArea|state=expanded)) to show the template expanded, i.e., fully visible
• |state=autocollapse: ((DCMetroArea|state=autocollapse))
  • shows the template collapsed to the title bar if there is a ((navbar)), a ((sidebar)), or some other table on the page with the collapsible attribute
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If the |state= parameter in the template on this page is not set, the template's initial visibility is taken from the |default= parameter in the Collapsible option template. For the template on this page, that currently evaluates to autocollapse.