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Richmond carries a weight that few American cities can match. For four years it was the capital of the Confederacy, and the streets around Capitol Square still bear the scars and monuments of that chapter. The city burned in April 1865 as Confederate forces retreated, and the ruins photographed by Alexander Gardner show a place that had to rebuild itself from ash, literally and symbolically.

That rebuilding never really stopped.

Monument Avenue, once lined with enormous statues of Confederate generals, became a flashpoint in 2020 when nearly all those monuments came down. Walking it now is a lesson in how cities negotiate their own stories. The James River cuts through the city below the fall line, and the old tobacco warehouses along Shockoe Bottom have turned into bars and galleries. Richmond today is a craft beer capital, a mural city, and a place genuinely wrestling with what it wants to be next.