Richmond's rise through the New York Times' lens
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Richmond in January. Photo: Al Drago/Getty Images
The New York Times recently dropped its latest guide on how to spend a weekend in Richmond, the pub's fifth travel feature on RVA in recent years.
Why it matters: The Times' evolving coverage not only tracks the city's evolution from a sleepy Southern town to a must-visit cultural destination. It helps cement it for a national audience.
- And it's a journey that's well worth taking a look back at.
The big picture: For more than 50 years, the NYT has been dispatching travel writers down here to marvel at the former Confederate capital and report back on its happenings, per an Axios review of its coverage.
- And for decades, history, old buildings and mild spring weather were the chief reasons anyone should visit Richmond, according the Times' earliest published weekend guides going back to the 1970s.
- Back then, the paper encouraged visitors to rent a car and suggested they spend as much time outside of Richmond as in it.
The latest: The Richmond of today, per the NYT piece published last week, is one the author "fell in love" with during a 2023 visit — and keeps revisiting.
- With the James, our abundance of craft breweries, fantastic bakeries and creative restaurants, plus a new amphitheater and baseball stadium, Richmond makes "a perfect weekend destination" — for anyone, he writes.
And that's just the start of what visitors should consider as part of the NYT's jam-packed itinerary, which has tourists wandering from Carytown to Church Hill amid "a wonderland of porches," with stops at:
- Quirky local shops like Rest in Pieces, It's a Man's World, CobbleStore Vintage and Lineage.
- Impressive museums and parks, including the American Civil War Museum. VMFA, Libby Hill Park, Belle Isle and Monroe Park.
- And feasting at Beauvine Burger Concept, B-Side Bakehouse, Sub Rosa, Perly's, Helen's, The Jasper, Legend Brewing Co. and Lemaire.
The intrigue: It's a striking departure from how the NYT travel writers found the city in 2009, when Richmond was described as "fried okra country" and a Southern town in transition.
- We fared better in 2016, emerging as a "new Richmond" with "a restaurant scene that gets better every month."
It seems 2020 was the tipping point.
- That's when RVA landed on The Times' list of 52 must-visit places "as a true cultural destination."
- It was also the year that Richmond began to shed the last vestiges of our Confederate past — beginning with the arrival of "Rumors of War" in late 2019 and ending with the removal of the Confederate monuments.
- And the NYT has been obsessed with us ever since.
The bottom line: Richmond has arrived.