The US craft beer capital and the unexpected food city — Jackson Ward's Black history, Poe's museum, and the Haxall Canal trails
Richmond, Virginia is the fastest-rising food and drink city on the US East Coast — the former capital of the Confederacy has transformed into a nationally recognised craft beer hub (more breweries per capita than any US city outside Portland and San Diego), a restaurant scene that punches above its weight relative to its size, and a walkable neighbourhood culture in Church Hill (the oldest neighbourhood, Civil War-era row houses on the hill above the James River), Jackson Ward (the historically Black neighbourhood known as 'The Harlem of the South' for its role as a centre of Black-owned bus…
Richmond was the capital of the Confederate States of America from May 1861 until the fall of the city in April 1865 — its capture ended the Civil War. The history of slavery in Richmond is profound and present: the city was the second-largest slave-trading centre in the United States (after New Orleans), and the Richmond Slave Trail along the James River traces the physical geography of the trade. The post-Civil War reconstruction and Jim Crow era produced Jackson Ward's extraordinary history as a centre of Black economic life — Bill 'Bojangles' Robinson (the tap dancer) and the Maggie L. Wa…