Visiting Charlottesville

Charlottesville is a small city located in the heart of Virginia. Although the city itself has a population of around 50,000, the University of Virginia brings thousands of students to the area during the school year and gives Charlottesville a much livelier atmosphere than its size might suggest. There always seems to be something going on, with festivals, live music, restaurants, and plenty to explore around the city center. Above are two photographs of the Downtown Mall, Charlottesville’s pedestrian district lined with bars, restaurants, shops, and historic buildings.

There are several interesting stores along the Downtown Mall as well. I’m not a big shopper, but since I had just started taking a Chinese language class, I felt obligated to check out this Chinese store. I figured everything would be expensive considering its location in the middle of downtown, but there were actually plenty of interesting objects for reasonable prices, so I left with a few things!

At one end of the Downtown Mall is an outdoor pavilion that regularly hosts concerts and other events. When I visited there was live music, food vendors, and lots of people outside enjoying the middle of summer. The pedestrian streets make this part of Charlottesville especially enjoyable to explore on foot, and the combination of outdoor dining, music, and historic buildings gives downtown a lot of character.

Outside the main pedestrian area, some of Charlottesville’s businesses occupy buildings that look more like old homes than storefronts. This becomes especially noticeable as you get closer to the historic parts of the city. I enjoyed this area most for its architecture, particularly at night when the brick sidewalks and older buildings were warmly lit and the streets were quiet.

Above are two of the historic buildings I came across while walking around Charlottesville. On the left is the Albemarle County Courthouse, which dates to the early 1800s. Much of the area surrounding Court Square preserves the appearance of an older Virginia town and is an interesting contrast to the busier university neighborhoods elsewhere in Charlottesville.

Probably the most famous attraction around Charlottesville is Monticello, the home of President Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson began designing and building Monticello in the 18th century and continued modifying the estate for decades. He had a lifelong interest in architecture, science, agriculture, and engineering, and many of those interests can be seen throughout the house and surrounding property.

Thomas Jefferson had a lifelong fascination with knowledge and science. He was also the founder of the University of Virginia, which he considered one of his greatest accomplishments. From the grounds of Monticello you can look toward Charlottesville and the university he helped create. The photo above on the left was taken from the property looking in that direction.

Photography wasn’t allowed inside the house when I toured it, but the interior contained several clever designs and devices that reflected Jefferson’s interests. One example I could photograph from outside was the system connected to the weather vane. Jefferson incorporated practical features like these throughout Monticello, turning parts of his home into tools for observing and recording the world around him.

Since I couldn’t photograph the inside of the house, I can only describe what I saw during the tour. Several rooms on the main floor were open to visitors. The entrance hall almost felt like a small museum, filled with maps, artwork, natural specimens, and objects collected from different parts of the world. Other rooms included dining areas, Jefferson’s bedroom, and living spaces containing furniture and some of the inventions and unusual features incorporated into the house.

Outside, visitors can explore the gardens, trails, and plantation grounds. Monticello was also a working plantation that depended heavily on the labor of enslaved people. Jefferson wrote about liberty and expressed complicated and sometimes contradictory views about slavery while enslaving more than 600 people over the course of his lifetime. Today, the history of the enslaved families who lived and worked at Monticello is an important part of understanding the estate and Jefferson’s legacy.

The grounds themselves are beautiful and worth spending some time exploring after touring the house. Jefferson experimented extensively with agriculture and grew numerous varieties of vegetables, fruits, flowers, and other plants at Monticello. Today the restored gardens help show another side of life on the estate while also providing some great views of the surrounding Virginia countryside.

Lastly, the property contains the Jefferson family cemetery and the grave of Thomas Jefferson himself. Jefferson lived to the age of 83 and died at Monticello on July 4, 1826. In an incredible coincidence, his death came exactly 50 years after the adoption of the Declaration of Independence, of which he had been the principal author. Even more remarkably, former President John Adams died on the very same day.