INFORMATION | If you go

LOCATION
Richmond is 90 miles south of Washington, D.C., and is intersected by Interstates 95 and 64. Major airlines and Amtrak serve the city.
DINING
The Mother's Day buffet at The Jefferson Hotel is $38 per adult and $19.95 for children 6-12, plus tax and tip. Children under 6 are free.
With the revival of the Shockoe Slip and Shockoe Bottom districts downtown, other restaurants and bistros are available, including Sam Miller's, The Tobacco Company, Rivah Bistro and, for inexpensive seafood, Awful Arthur's.
LODGING
Published rates for The Jefferson range from standard room, $265, to the Presidential Suite, $1,800, per night. Travel Web sites tout special rates as low as $219. Ask for special packages that may include dinner or brunch on weekends.
Near The Jefferson is another historic lodging, Linden Row Inn, which is less expensive and not as polished. A two-room suite with high ceilings and antiques is about $140 per night, including a light breakfast. Linden Row comprises a series of townhouses along Franklin Street and inner brick buildings in a courtyard. Some of poet Edgar Allan Poe's childhood was spent there.
MORE TO DO
Thanksgiving and Christmas at The Jefferson are other holiday opportunities, including brunch Christmas Day. An elaborate schedule of choral performances, teas and tastings was featured last season.
Richmond's newest commemoration of its past is a statue of Abraham Lincoln and his son, Tad, dedicated in April at the Richmond National Battlefield Park amid some controversy. The city already was known for statues of Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee and other leaders of the Confederacy.
The history of Virginia is not all male. At the Virginia Historical Society, busts or portraits of Martha Washington, Dolly Madison and Nancy Astor, the first woman to sit in the British House of Commons, are on display, as is Pocahontas. "We show her both as the real and the mythic," says Jim Kelly, director of the society's museums, of the native American guide.
Each Sunday from Memorial Day weekend through Labor Day weekend, re-enactors at St. John's Church portray 10 of the historical figures at the Second Virginia Convention. They debate whether the colony should prepare for its defense against the British, ending with Patrick's Henry famous lines. A voluntary donation is collected by the church.
ON THE NET
www.jefferson-hotel.com
www.historicstjohnschurch.org (site of St. John's Church)
www.vahistorical.org (Virginia Historical Society)
www.nps.gov/malw/ (Maggie L. Walker National Historic Site)
www.stpauls-episcopal.org (St. Paul's Episcopal Church)
www.poemuseum.org (Edgar Allan Poe Museum)