Richmond

American Civil War Museum — White House of the Confederacy

Museum · 1201 E Clay St, Richmond, VA 23219

The White House of the Confederacy was built in 1818 — the Revolutionary era's immediate architectural aftermath — and served as Jefferson Davis's presidential residence during the Civil War. The associated American Civil War Museum provides context for how Richmond's Revolutionary era identity was refracted through the Confederacy's appropriation of the Founders. The site illuminates how the same city that was burned by Benedict Arnold in 1781 and designed a capitol modeled on Roman republicanism by Jefferson later became the capital of a slaveholding Confederacy that claimed the same revolutionary legacy.

Black History Museum and Cultural Center of Virginia

Museum · 122 W Leigh St, Richmond, VA 23220

Dedicated to preserving and interpreting African American history in Virginia from the colonial era through the present. Revolutionary War-era exhibits address the experience of enslaved Virginians during the conflict, including the impact of Dunmore's Proclamation, the service of Black soldiers in both Continental and British forces, and the story of James Armistead Lafayette, the enslaved spy who served as a double agent for the Continental Army. The museum provides essential context for understanding the Revolution's incomplete promises and the gap between its ideals and its practice in Virginia.

James River and Kanawha Canal — Canal Walk

Trail · Canal Walk, Richmond, VA 23219

Richmond's Canal Walk follows the route of the James River and Kanawha Canal, conceived by George Washington as a way to connect the Tidewater with the trans-Appalachian interior. Washington's interest in western navigation was inseparable from his Revolutionary-era vision of American expansion. The 1.25-mile walk along the historic canal basin passes bronze medallions interpreting Richmond history and offers views of the James River falls that defined Richmond's location as the fall line city where ocean navigation ended and river travel began. The canal infrastructure was built after the Revolution but reflects Washington's wartime-era thinking about the new nation's economic geography.

Shockoe Bottom Historic District

Landmark · Shockoe Bottom, Richmond, VA 23223

The low-lying neighborhood between downtown Richmond and the James River that was the center of the domestic slave trade in the 19th century, but during the Revolutionary era was Richmond's commercial waterfront and the area through which goods and people moved. Benedict Arnold's January 1781 raid targeted the warehouses and commercial district around Shockoe Bottom, burning tobacco stores and military supplies. The area today is under ongoing archaeological investigation, and sites associated with the slave trade are being evaluated for a proposed memorial. The neighborhood embodies the full arc of Richmond history from the Revolution through the Civil War.

St. John's Church

Church · 2401 E Broad St, Richmond, VA 23223

The oldest frame church in Richmond, built 1741, where the Second Virginia Convention met in March 1775 and Patrick Henry delivered his 'Give me liberty, or give me death' speech on March 23, 1775. The church was chosen for the convention because it was the largest indoor meeting space available in the small town of Richmond. Henry's exact words were never recorded verbatim; the speech as known today was reconstructed decades later by William Wirt from the memories of men who were present. The church survived intact and still stands on Church Hill. St. John's reenacts the convention speech on summer weekends.

The Old Stone House — Edgar Allan Poe Museum

Historic House · 1914–16 E Main St, Richmond, VA 23223

The Old Stone House, built ca. 1737, is the oldest structure in Richmond and one of the few buildings that survived Benedict Arnold's January 1781 raid, which burned much of the town. The building gives Richmond visitors their most direct physical connection to the Revolutionary-era city. Now the Edgar Allan Poe Museum (Poe was born in Richmond in 1809), the house preserves the physical scale and construction of 18th-century Richmond and is a useful anchor for understanding what Arnold's troops encountered and destroyed during the 1781 British raid.

Virginia State Capitol

Government · 1000 Bank St, Richmond, VA 23219

Designed by Thomas Jefferson and Charles-Louis Clérisseau and completed in 1788, the Virginia State Capitol was the first government building in America designed in the neoclassical style modeled on a Roman temple — specifically the Maison Carrée at Nîmes. Jefferson designed it while serving as minister to France, intending to give the new republic a visual language drawn from ancient republican Rome rather than English precedent. The Capitol was built after Richmond became the state capital in 1780; it housed the Virginia General Assembly through the Civil War (when it served as the Confederate Congress's meeting place) and beyond. A life-size Houdon statue of George Washington stands in the rotunda — the only statue for which Washington sat from life.