Virginia's capital, Richmond, is among the nation's earliest urban areas. Patrick Henry, a U.S. congressman, was a member of the U.S. House of Representatives In 1775, in St. John's Church, a Founding Father famously proclaimed 'Give me liberty or give me death,' sparking the Revolutionary War.
Richmond is the capital of the United States Commonwealth of Virginia. The Richmond Metropolitan Statistical Area & the Greater Richmond Region are both centered here. Richmond was founded in 1742 and has been a city in its own right since 1871. The population of the city was 226,610 in 2020, according to the 2010 census, giving it Virginia's fourth-most populated city. The Richmond Metropolitan Area has a capacity of 1,260,029 people, making it the state's third most populated metro.
Richmond is located 44 miles west of Williamsburg, 66 miles east of Charlottesville, 91 miles east of Lynchburg, and 92 miles south of Washington, D.C. It is surrounded by Henrico and Chesterfield counties and is bisected by Interstate 95 and Interstate 64, as well as Interstate 295, Virginia State Route 150, and Virginia State Route 288. Midlothian is in the southwest, Chesterfield is in the south, Varina is in the southeast, Sandston is in the east, Glen Allen is in the west and north, Short Pump is in the west, as well as Mechanicsville is in the northeast.
Richmond was founded on the grounds of a Powhatan Confederacy colony that was temporarily inhabited by English colonists from Jamestown between 1609 and 1611. Richmond, as we know it now, was established in 1737. In 1780, it replaced Williamsburg as the capital of the Virginia Colony and Dominion. Several noteworthy events happened in the city during the Revolutionary War period, like Patrick Henry's 'Give me liberty or give me death' statement in 1775 at St. John's Church and the passing of Thomas Jefferson's Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom. During the American Civil War, Richmond was the Confederacy's capital. It began the twentieth century with one of the first truly fantastic streetcar networks in the country. The Jackson Ward district has long been a center of African-American trade and society.
Law, finance, and administration are the mainstays of Richmond's economy, with federal, state, and municipal government departments, as well as significant legal and financial enterprises, all located in the downtown region. Both a United States Court of Appeals (one of 13) and a Federal Reserve Bank (one of 12) is located in the city. Fortune 500 businesses Dominion Energy and WestRock are located in the region, with others in the metropolitan region. The city maintains to have one of the highest rates of violence and murder rates in the country, making it one of the most hazardous cities in the country.