Monument Avenue Historic District

A grand tree-lined boulevard laid out from the 1890s as Richmond's showpiece address, with grassed medians, cobbled cross streets and a near-unbroken run of Beaux-Arts, Colonial Revival and Tudor mansions. It is a National Historic Landmark district and, architecturally, one of the finest residential avenues in the country.

It was also built as a Confederate memorial corridor, and that is what made it a flashpoint. The statues came down in 2020 and 2021; what remains is the monument to tennis champion and Richmond native Arthur Ashe, added in 1996, and a series of empty pedestals and circles that the city is still deciding what to do with. The debate over what replaces them is very much live.

Best experienced slowly on foot between roughly Stuart Circle and the Boulevard, where the houses are at their most extravagant.