Virginia State Capitol

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.