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Photo: Morgan Riley, CC BY 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons
Richmond is the birthplace of the First African Baptist Church. This church had been a church where Whites, Free Blacks, and Slaves would worship alongside each other. However, the church separated from the First Baptist Church once African Americans were given permission to establish their own church in 1841. The First African Baptist Church was regularly rented by whites for concerts, minstrel shows and political rallies, including a debate by working-class whites over union versus secession, held in a church where a slave-owning white minister led free blacks and slaves in regular worship: surprising as the scene might seem, to Richmonders during this time it was wholly unremarkable. The old church building is now a property of Medical College of Virginia.
The First African Baptist Church of Richmond, Virginia is a Baptist Church. Founded in 1841, its members included both slaves and freedmen. It has since had a major influence on the local black community. At one point, it was one of the largest Protestant churches in the United States.
There are fishing lakes, seasonal paddle boats, a fitness trail and the Dogwood Dell Amphitheater, home to the Summer Festival of Arts. The park abuts Maymount at the end of the Boulevard.
A museum dedicated to depicting the Holocaust as experienced by its victims. Exhibits include a recreation of the Dachau concentration camp, a cattle car, used for transporting Jews, a shower/gas chamber, a crematory, an exhibition of the ship Exodus 1947, the ship that helped launch the nation of Israel, and a rebuilt Nuremberg Courtroom.
The neo-classical seat of local government, home of the oldest elected legislature in North America, dating back to 1619. The current incarnation was designed by Thomas Jefferson in 1785, after the Maison Carrée, a Roman temple in Nîmes, France. Free 1hr tours are offered on the hour, every from 10AM til 4PM. The Capitol Visitor center is closed through the end of 2023.
A wealthy landowner donated his estate to the city, and Richmond turned it into one of the most beautiful urban parks in the nation. Fountains, Italianate gardens, and a Japanese tea garden are a pleasure to walk through. The nature center here is all-encompassing and free, and its exhibits on Virginia Wildlife include two otters who are glad to show off for visitors. Gray foxes, red-tailed hawks, and other exhibits are located outside. Kids like the farm area, where sheep, lambs, chickens, and other sundry animals are exhibited.
Three floors of galleries containing the world's most comprehensive collection of artifacts, manuscripts, and photographs from the Confederate States of America. The Museum also maintains and gives tours of the White House of the Confederacy.
This was the first building and home of the Medical College of Virginia, which now surrounds the structure.