Richmond boasts more than 100 attractions of interest to visitors. Among them are homes and other buildings from all eras of the city's history, as well as battlegrounds and cemeteries. A great place to start is with the Canal Walk along the James River in downtown Richmond, where visitors can meander for 1.25 miles by foot or ride a tour boat past 22 historical markers, statues and points of interest. One of those points of interest is the Civil War Visitor Center along the Canal Walk. Housed in the former Tredegar Iron Works, the Civil War Visitor Center contains three floors of exhibits and interpretive displays recollecting Richmond's role in the Civil War, and provides an introduction to the National Battlefield Park in Richmond.
A convenient next stop along the Canal Walk is Brown's Island, a historic city park often used for outdoor concerts, picnics, biking, and Frisbee. Belle Isle is accessible via the footbridge under the Lee Bridge near the Tredegar Iron Works building. The site served as a camp for Union prisoners of war but is now a popular recreation spot for Richmond residents. More canal history is reflected by the Kanawha Canal Locks, where Reynolds Metals Company has preserved two locks that were built in 1854. The magnificent stone locks were part of the nation's first canal system, as originally planned by George Washington to carry river traffic around the falls.
The Floodwall along the James River, built to minimize damage from storm-induced rising waters, has become a work of art in its own right with the Floodwall Picture Gallery of murals. A walking tour can transition from the Floodwall into the Shockoe Bottom District, where a variety of historic structures remain and have been restored post-flood. The focal point in Capital Square's 12-acre park-like setting is the Virginia State Capitol, which has served as the seat of state government since 1788. Thomas Jefferson designed the central portion of the classic building, the first of its kind in America. Inside, French sculptor Houdon's life-size statute of George Washington stands in the Rotunda.
Visitors can find many examples of residential life in early Richmond, including Scotchtown, which was the Hanover County home that Patrick Henry occupied during the years of his Revolutionary War activities. The restored house and grounds are a national historic landmark. City-owned and recently restored as a museum, John Marshall's sturdy but unpretentious brick house (1790) honors the third Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court who lived in Richmond. Built in 1813 and frequently remodeled (most recently in 1999 at a cost of $7.2 million), the Governor's Mansion is the oldest executive mansion in the United States in continuous use for its original purpose. It has been furnished with fine antiques by a Virginia citizens group. Dabbs House is a pre-Civil War dwelling that was used by General Robert E. Lee as headquarters during the "Seven Days Battle" in 1862. It is now Henrico eastern division police headquarters. This White House of the Confederacy served as the residence of Jefferson Davis during the Civil War. The Maggie Walker House, now a museum, was the home of the African American woman who became the nation's first woman of any race to found a bank and become its president.
The late-Victorian estate Maymont, located in the heart of Richmond, has more than 100 acres featuring a Victorian home and decorative arts, formal Japanese and Italian gardens, a unique arboretum, a nature center with an outdoor wildlife habitat (native Virginia species), a demonstration farm, and a working carriage collection. Maymont opened the doors of its new Robins Nature and Visitors Center in late 1999; the center features a 20-foot waterfall and exhibits describing the history and power of the James River.
Agecroft Hall, a medieval manor house moved to Richmond from England during the 1920s, is perched above the James River much as it originally overlooked the Irwell River. The house was built in England about the time Columbus was planning his voyage in 1492 to the New World. It is now a museum house open to the public and features an Elizabethan Knot garden. Also shipped to Richmond from England during the 1920s were portions of the sixteenth-century English house, Warwick Priory. Situated in Windsor Farms, a fashionable residential area, it was originally a private home but is now a museum known as Virginia House.
Sightseers can visit several other kinds of historic buildings in Richmond. At Hanover Courthouse, a young Patrick Henry successfully argued his first major case. St. John's Church in Richmond's Church Hill district, built in 1741, is famous as the site of Henry's impassioned "Give me liberty or give me death" speech. Finally, the Egyptian Building, erected in 1845 and still in use, is the Medical College of Virginia's first building. Its Egyptian Revival architecture is regarded as the finest of its kind in the country. The Egyptian motif extends to the fence, which has posts shaped like mummy cases.
History buffs may also find places of interest elsewhere in and around the Richmond area. Flowerdew Hundred is the site of an excavated, seventeenth-century English settlement in Prince George County, location of the first windmill in English North America. A visitors center in the former plantation schoolhouse features films and archaeological exhibits. Chickahominy Bluff, Cold Harbor, Malvern Hill, Fort Harrison, and Drewry's Bluff have special interpretive facilities. Hollywood Cemetery (named for its holly trees) is the burial place of U.S. presidents James Monroe and John Tyler, Confederate president Jefferson Davis, General J.E.B. Stuart and 1,800 Confederate soldiers, along with members of prominent Richmond families. Illustrious Chief Justice John Marshall and the infamous Elizabeth Van Lew, a Yankee spy during the Civil War, are both buried at Shockoe Cemetery.
Atop the 22-story City Hall is a sky deck from which visitors can obtain a sweeping view of Richmond and its environs. A map is available to help identify the visible landmarks in a panorama that covers four centuries of the city's history.
Plantation homes dating from the seventeenth century fan out on all sides of Richmond. Of special interest are the elegant James River Plantations to the east. Other Richmond area plantations include Belle Air (c. 1670); Berkeley (ancestral home of two U.S. presidents and the site of the first Thanksgiving in 1619); Evelynton (ancestral home of the Ruffin family); Sherwood Forest (home of President John Tyler); Shirley (home of the Carter family since 1723); Tuckahoe Plantation (the most complete plantation layout in North America, dating from the eighteenth century); Westover (c. 1730; home of William Byrd II, founder of Richmond); and Wilton (built in 1750 by William Randolph II and moved to Richmond in 1933).
Self-guided automobile tours, bus tours, walking tours, individual tours, and riverboat paddlewheel cruises (as far down-river as Shirley Plantation) are also available. Philip Morris offers regular tours of its $200 million cigarette manufacturing center, which also houses a tobacco museum, shop, and visitors' gallery. Antique shopping is also a favorite pastime.
Visitors and residents alike find relaxation and meaning along the statue-studded length of Monument Avenue. Robert E. Lee, "Stonewall" Jackson, J.E.B. Stuart, Jefferson Davis, Bill "Mr. Bojangles" Robinson, Arthur Ashe, and Matthew Moury each command major focal points. One of the grand boulevards of the world, Monument Avenue provides a good site for an easy-paced stroll, and it is closed off once a year for one of the city's largest street festivals.
A driving and energetic force in the Richmond arts and culture scene is the Arts Council of Richmond, Inc., which sponsors festivals and art exhibits throughout the year. The Arts Council has established partnerships with all Richmond Public Schools in an effort to extend the performing and visual art experience to students of all ages.
The Carpenter Center for the Performing Arts is housed in the renovated Loew's Theatre in downtown Richmond. The Carpenter Center is the home of the Richmond Symphony and offers local ballet and opera, as well as Broadway shows and other productions of national acclaim.
The Richmond Symphony and the Richmond Philharmonic remain dynamic musical entities in the area. The Richmond Symphony's Masterworks Series focuses on the classics and brings the world's great soloists to the city, while programs such as Kicked Back Classics and Family Concerts broaden the appeal of the traditional symphonic repertoire. The Richmond Philharmonic, a member-run orchestra, has entertained Richmond for more than 30 years and performs four or five concerts per season.
Richmond is also home to a number of community orchestras and choruses, school and university musical organizations, and a growing number of other musical groups. The Virginia Opera Association performs an expanded number of productions each season at the Landmark Theater, the Edythe C. and Stanley L. Harrison Opera House, and George Mason University's Center for the Arts. The opera company operates a nationally-recognized In-School Touring Program to bring opera to the students, then brings the students to the opera with special Student Nights and Student Matinees. The Richmond Pops/Great Big Band plays a winter series as well as a summer series. The Richmond Concert Band's annual Fourth of July performance in Dogwood Dell of Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture is a Richmond tradition. Other musical groups include the Greater Richmond Chapter of the Sweet Adelines, the Virginia Chorale, the Richmond Chamber Players, the Richmond Renaissance Singers, and many others. Outdoor performances are frequently presented at parks and public sites around the city.
Theater of all sorts is plentiful. Besides Carpenter Center, Richmond's Landmark Theater plays host to musical groups of national prominence in an opulent structure equipped with a magnificent Wurlitzer theater organ.
Theater IV is one of Richmond's most active theater companies. The company is based in the renovated Empire Theatre, the oldest theater still in use in Virginia. It offers a Broadway Series, an Off-Broadway Series, and a Family Playhouse, the nation's second largest children's theater. The Barksdale Theatre houses the oldest not-for-profit theater in the area and features professionally-staged productions throughout the year. For a more off-beat or contemporary theater experience, the Firehouse Theatre Project offers productions of off-Broadway and original works never before seen in the Richmond area. The Richmond Triangle Players push the envelope even more, in theater that explores alternative themes.
Theatre VCU, Virginia Commonwealth University's student theater group, performs dramas, comedies, and musicals in the university's Shafer Street Playhouse and in the Raymond Hodges Theatre in VCU's Performing Arts Center. The University Players at the University of Richmond perform four productions a year in the Camp Theater of the Modlin Fine Arts Center. Virginia Union University Players perform in the university's Wall Auditorium. The Randolph-Macon Drama Guild presents four plays a season in the college's old Chapel Theater. Other theater groups include Chamberlayne Actors Theatre, Fieldens Cabaret Theater, and the Henrico Theatre Company.
Richmond also has three ballet companies: the Richmond Ballet, the Concert Ballet of Virginia, and the Latin Ballet of Virginia. The Richmond Ballet's interpretation of The Nut-cracker is an annual Christmas classic that has been playing to sold-out audiences for years. The Richmond Ballet is a professional ballet company, maintaining dancers on full-time seasonal contracts. Accompanied by the Richmond Symphony, it provides the best dance training in the state and attracts dancers from across the United States and abroad, with an impressive repertoire and touring schedule throughout the state and nation. The Concert Ballet of Virginia holds four repertoire programs per season featuring Virginia composers, choreographers, musicians, and dancers. The Latin Ballet of Richmond is a relatively recent addition, having formed as a non-profit in 1997. The company aims to fuse Latin dance styles with ballet in evoking the passionate cultures and histories of Spain and Latin America. The company educates and attracts diverse participants and audiences through its outreach activities and performances.
The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts has long had a national reputation for creative and innovative arts programming, dating back to its founding in 1936 as the nation's first state-supported art museum. The museum achieved an international reputation with the 1985 opening of the West Wing, which houses collections of nineteenth- and twentieth-century decorative arts, contemporary paintings and sculptures, and various eighteenth-, nineteenth-, and twentieth-century British, French, and American works of art. Further expansion is planned that will create more parking, improve the fire suppression system, and refine the sculpture garden. The museum houses more than 30 permanent galleries, as well as collections that are broad and varied: French Impressionists, Indian sculpture, medieval tapestries, French Romantics, American art of all periods, and the largest collection outside Russia of the Russian Imperial jewels crafted by Peter Carl Fabergé.
Another museum that has focused international attention on Richmond is the Science Museum of Virginia. The museum's $7 million Universe Planetarium/Space Theater is equipped with Digistar 1, the world's first computer graphics planetarium projection system. Information on the 6,772 stars visible from earth and the 55 known major objects in the solar system is programmed in the computer's memory. The 280-seat domed theater has the largest projection surface of any planetarium in the world, and the world's largest projector, the Omnimax, is used to present 70-millimeter film productions on the wraparound screen. The Science Museum also owns the Aviation Museum on the east side of Richmond and has plans to expand that facility with a new wing. Development at the Science Museum includes new exhibits on local industry and technology, as well as in-depth looks at ecosystems. The museum operates a Science-by-Van program that takes sciences out to the public schools.
Besides the Science Museum and the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, there are many other Richmond-area museums, all distinctive in character. Among them is the Chesterfield County Museum, which houses murals and displays depicting the county's history through the Revolutionary and Civil wars and into modern times. Among its artifacts, the Museum of the Confederacy displays the sword and uniform worn by Lee when he surrendered at Appomattox. The uniform coat worn by J.E.B. Stuart when he was felled is displayed at the Virginia Historical Society Museum, visible bullet hole and all. The Fire and Police Museum, dating to the early 1800s, uses window bars, a possible gallows, and fire poles to tell the story of its history as a jail and a police station. Memorabilia of Edgar Allan Poe is displayed in the Poe Museum; the eighteenth-century stone structure is believed to be the oldest in the city. The Virginia E. Randolph Museum, a Henrico County cottage, is dedicated in memory of Virginia E. Randolph, an African American woman who was a pioneer educator and humanitarian. The Black History Museum and Cultural Center of Virginia was founded in 1981 to preserve the oral, visual, and written records that commemorate the lives and accomplishments of African Americans in Virginia and to serve as a cultural and educational center for exhibitions, performances, and displays.
The Valentine Richmond History Center is devoted to the life and history of Richmond. The Children's Museum, established in 1981, introduces young people to the arts and humanities through participation in exhibits, workshops, and special programs; a move is planned for the Children's Museum that will triple its size.
Galleries include the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Virginia Commonwealth University's Anderson Gallery, and the 1708 Gallery. The University of Richmond features exhibitions in Marsh Gallery in the Modlin Fine Arts Center. Nonprofit galleries include the Weinstein Jewish Community Center, the Last Stop (home of the Richmond Chapter of the National Conference of Artists, an African American arts and education group), the Richmond Public Library, the Westover Hills Branch Library, and many bank spaces and commercial galleries.
Richmond hosts several major celebrations throughout the year. Perhaps the biggest of all is The Big Gig, a 16-day-long music festival in early July that offers classical Jazz, New Age, African, folk, and popular music performances staged at locations all over town. Music is also the focus at Jumpin', a series of weekly concerts held in July at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts Sculpture Garden, as well as the Midweek Mojo and Friday Cheers concert series.
Richmond's other special celebrations include the Strawberry Hill Horse Races in April; the Virginia State Fair, a 12-day event held in late September and early October; February's Maymont Flower and Garden Show; the Winston Cup Race weekend in March; Historic Garden week in April; Arts in the Park, the Greek Festival, and the Camptown Races, all in May; the Virginia State Horse show in August; the 2nd Street Festival, celebrating African American history in September; November's Richmond Marathon; and the Grand Illumination and Christmas Parade in December.
Richmond's ball park, The Diamond, is home to the Richmond Braves, a Triple A affiliate of the National League Atlanta Braves. A new $330 million ballpark proposal is under consideration by the government and citizenry of Richmond. The Richmond Rhythm of the International Basketball League had their inaugural season in 1999 at the recently-renovated Richmond Coliseum, an air-conditioned dome that also hosts stage shows, concerts, college basketball, professional basketball and hockey games, ice shows, the circus, and professional wrestling matches. Professional hockey is the forte of the Richmond Renegades, who play in the East Coast Hockey League and take on opponents at the Freezer. The Richmond Speed play arena football, and the Richmond Kickers are the local soccer team to watch. Richmond also hosts the Round-Robin World's Largest Softball Tournament each Memorial Day weekend, with teams from across the U.S., Canada and Iceland participating. Virginia Commonwealth University supports both men's and women's NCAA Division I basketball teams. In football action, the Gold Bowl Classic is one of 21 college games scheduled in the Richmond area during the year.
The Richmond International Raceway is the only three-quarter-mile track of its kind on the NASCAR circuit. The raceway is host to two Grand National Series races and two Winston Cup Series races.
The Richmond Marathon was mentioned as America's friendliest marathon in the January 2005 issue of Runner's World magazine, with comfortable temperatures, a scenic route and an enthusiastic crowd along the entire 26.2 mile route.
When Richmond residents want to get out, the James River is the destination of choice. Kayaking and rafting instruction and trips are available, and fishing is also a popular pastime. Attractions along the James also include James River Park, one of the few wilderness parks in the United States that has an urban setting. The 450-acre James River Park is just a tiny segment of what may be the largest amount of park space in any urban area of the country with a total of 24,118 acres of local, state, and national park land in and around the Richmond metropolitan area. The Pony Pasture loop trail is recommended as an easy, one-hour hike that passes through wetlands and meadows. Pocahontas State Park and Forest, south of the river in Chesterfield County, and several lakes surrounding the Richmond area offer myriad outdoor activities as well.
Golfers can haul their clubs to any of a vast array of local and area courses, including the 18-hole Belmont Golf Course and the 27 holes of family golfing at the Hollows Golf Club just west of Richmond. Private and public tennis facilities are also available, most notably the Arthur Ashe Center.
Richmond's downtown area offers shoppers a wide variety of stores from which to choose. Shockoe Slip, a cobblestoned riverfront area that used to serve as a cotton and tobacco trading district, is now a focus for nightlife, restaurants, shops, offices, and apartments. The Carytown section of Richmond features several blocks of unique and colorful shops and restaurants. The "On the Avenues" shopping area at the juncture of Libbie and Grove Avenues is a collection of 45 specialty shops intermingled with Victorian residences and sidewalk cafes, creating a boutique shopping experience. The 300-year-old 17th Street Farmers' Market supplies regional and organic foods to locals and tourists, along with an open-air community experience of conversation and music with neighbors. A variety of more mainstream malls are sprinkled throughout Richmond, including The Shops at Willow Lawn, Regency Square Mall, River Road Shopping Center, and Chesterfield Towne Center. Just outside the city are outlet malls that attract numerous bargain-hunters, and Richmond is within easy distance of the renowned Williamsburg Pottery Factory.
Richmond has cultivated an increasingly international flavor as a city, and its varied menu of restaurants is evidence. Barbecue and soul food eateries have a strong presence, with Italian and seafood spots running a close second. Other restaurant specialties include Argentinean, steaks, British, cheese and wine, Chinese, continental, French, German, Greek, Indian, international, Irish-American, Japanese, Vietnamese, Mexican-American, organic, Polynesian, regional specialties, southern cooking, and tea rooms.
Visitor Information: Richmond Visitors Center, 405 N. 3rd St., Richmond, VA 23219; telephone (804)783-7450; toll free (800)866-3705