The Poe Museum

Four small buildings and a walled garden in Shockoe Bottom, built around the Old Stone House of about 1750 — the oldest surviving building in Richmond, and one Poe would have walked past as a boy.

Poe never lived here, but he grew up in Richmond and did much of his working life in the city, and the museum holds the largest collection of his manuscripts, letters and personal effects anywhere: the bed he was born in, a lock of his hair, his childhood boyhood keepsakes. The Enchanted Garden at the centre has a brick shrine built from a demolished newspaper office where he worked, and two resident black cats named Edgar and Pluto.

Small enough for an hour, and a neat closing bracket if you have already seen his preserved room on the West Range at the University of Virginia. Closed Mondays.