Richmond, VA

Richmond (/ˈrɪtʃmənd/, RITCH-mənd) is the capital city of the U.S. state of Virginia. Incorporated in 1742, Richmond has been an independent city since 1871. It is the fourth-most populous city in Virginia, with a population of 226,610 at the 2020 census. The Richmond metropolitan area, with over 1.37 million residents, is the third-most populous metropolitan area in Virginia and 44th-largest in the United States. Richmond is located at the James River’s fall line.

Richmond was an important village in the Powhatan Confederacy and was briefly settled by English colonists from Jamestown from 1609 to 1611.^[7][8] Founded in 1737, it replaced Williamsburg as the capital of the Colony and Dominion of Virginia in 1780. During the Revolutionary War period, several notable events occurred in the city, including Patrick Henry‘s “Give me liberty or give me death!” speech in 1775 at St. John’s Church and the passage of the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom written by Thomas Jefferson. During the American Civil War, Richmond was the capital of the Confederate States of America.

Law, finance, and government primarily drive Richmond’s economy. The downtown area is home to federal, state, and local governmental agencies as well as notable legal and banking firms. The greater metropolitan area includes several Fortune 500 companies: Performance Food Group, Altria, CarMax, Dominion Energy, Markel, Owens and Minor, Genworth Financial, and ARKO Corp.^[9][10][11] The city is one of about a dozen to have both a U.S. Court of Appeals and a Federal Reserve Bank.