Williamsburg

Williamsburg, in Virginia's Tidewater, was the capital of the Virginia Colony from 1699 to 1780 and a cradle of the American Revolution, where Patrick Henry and Thomas Jefferson debated independence. Today its restored 18th-century core - Colonial Williamsburg - is one of the world's largest living-history museums, a recreated Georgian town of brick capitol, taverns, and tradespeople.

It anchors the "Historic Triangle" of the Virginia Peninsula together with Jamestown, the first permanent English settlement (1607), and Yorktown, where the Revolutionary War effectively ended in 1781. The College of William & Mary, founded here in 1693, is the second-oldest college in the United States.