Williamsburg

Williamsburg began in 1632 as Middle Plantation, a fortified settlement on the high ground between the James and York rivers, inland from Jamestown. The College of William & Mary was chartered here in 1693, the second college in the English colonies, and when the statehouse at Jamestown burned in 1698 the assembly moved the capital to the new town, which was laid out on a formal plan and renamed for King William III. For eighty years it was the political, social and intellectual centre of Virginia.

Patrick Henry attacked the Stamp Act in the Capitol in 1765; the burgesses, dissolved by the governor, reconvened in the Raleigh Tavern; the governor's seizure of the gunpowder in the Magazine in 1775 brought militia marching on the town; and in 1776 Virginia declared its independence and wrote its first constitution. Thomas Jefferson studied at the College and, as governor, moved the capital to Richmond in 1780 because Williamsburg was vulnerable to British attack. The town shrank into a quiet county seat with a college and the country's first purpose-built psychiatric hospital. A Civil War battle was fought on its eastern edge in 1862.

In the 1920s the rector of Bruton Parish Church, W. A. R. Goodwin, persuaded John D. Rockefeller Jr. to fund the restoration of the colonial town. Over the following decades the restoration demolished 720 buildings put up after 1790, restored the 88 original structures that survived and rebuilt the Capitol, the Governor's Palace and many others on their foundations. Colonial Williamsburg opened with the Raleigh Tavern in 1932 and has defined the city ever since.

The restoration turned the heart of Williamsburg into a living-history museum, and the Historic Area is its stage. Interpreters in 18th-century clothing work as blacksmiths, printers, wigmakers, coopers and silversmiths in period workshops; character interpreters portray the town's 18th-century residents, from burgesses to the enslaved and free Black townspeople; and the Fifes and Drums, a corps of young musicians aged 10 to 18 founded in 1958, depict the Virginia State Garrison Regiment. Some interpreters work with animals, and the foundation runs teacher workshops and broadcasts for schools. Its programmes have shifted over the decades from a celebration of the founders to a franker account of the town: more African American interpreters joined in the 1970s, and a programme explaining slavery followed in 1981.

The College gives the city its other character. William & Mary is old by any standard, and its students fill the cafés of Merchants Square, run their own radio station and newspapers, and keep a calendar of traditions, among them the Yule Log Ceremony, at which the president dresses as Santa Claus. The Muscarelle Museum and campus events give the town a cultural life beyond the colonial, and students volunteer hundreds of thousands of hours a year in the community.

Williamsburg is Tidewater Virginia in manner: polite, unhurried, with an old-fashioned civic pride. Christmas is the season the city does best, with the Grand Illumination, which grew from the colonial custom of placing lighted candles in the windows to mark a special occasion, and candles and decorations throughout the Historic Area.

About 15,000 people live in the independent city of Williamsburg, many of them students, and nearly ten times that number in the surrounding counties of James City and York. The city itself is small — nine square miles — and the suburbs, outlet malls and theme parks that visitors associate with it mostly lie just outside the line in James City and York counties.

The economy rests on three legs: the College, the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation and tourism more broadly, from Busch Gardens and the hotels to the restaurants and golf courses. Anheuser-Busch runs a large brewery just outside the city, and health care and Eastern State Hospital, the successor of the colonial public hospital, add public jobs. A high proportion of residents draw much of their income from investments rather than from work.

The rhythm is set by the academic year and the tourist seasons. Term time brings students to Merchants Square and traffic to Richmond Road; summer brings families and coaches; the autumn is quieter and the Christmas season fills the hotels again. Residents live in the leafy streets around the College and the Historic Area, in planned communities such as Kingsmill and Ford's Colony, and in newer subdivisions along the interstate. Local debates turn on traffic, housing and the place of the college's large student population in the city's neighbourhoods, where the council has limited single-family houses to three unrelated occupants.

Williamsburg's table is colonial Virginia's: salt-cured Virginia ham, sliced thin and served on biscuits; peanut soup, a creamy soup of ground peanuts and stock that is a Virginia speciality; spoonbread, a soft cornmeal pudding eaten with a spoon; Brunswick stew, a tomato-based stew of chicken or game with corn and lima beans; Sally Lunn, a rich yeast bread; and sweet potatoes, greens, oysters and crab from the Chesapeake Bay. Four taverns in the Historic Area, reconstructed by the foundation, serve colonial fare with costumed staff.

Beyond the colonial menu, everyday eating centres on Merchants Square, where The Cheese Shop, a delicatessen and sandwich counter, is a favourite lunch stop for students and visitors, alongside cafés and restaurants from casual to formal. Family restaurants and breakfast places line Richmond Road and the other hotel strips.

Virginia-type peanuts, one of the main peanut varieties grown in the United States, are sold roasted and salted in the gift shops. The area is also a wine stop: the Williamsburg Winery, on the edge of the city, offers tastings in its cellar and has a restaurant. Coastal Virginia's seafood — crab cakes, oysters in winter, rockfish — appears on most menus, and barbecue, fried chicken and biscuits are never far away.