Northern Virginia, locally referred to as NOVA or NoVA, comprises several counties and independent cities in the Commonwealth of Virginia in the United States. The region radiates westward and southward from Washington, D.C., the nation's capital, and has a population of 3,257,133 people as of 2023 U.S. Census Bureau estimates, representing of a third of the state's total population. It is the most populous region in both Virginia and the regional Washington metropolitan area.
Image: Tysons Corner Sunset
Image: The Pentagon US Department of Defense building
Image: West Front Mansion Mount Vernon
Image: Reston Station West View
Virginia, officially the Commonwealth of Virginia, is a state in the Southeastern and Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States between the Atlantic Coast and the Appalachian Mountains. The state's capital is Richmond and its most populous city is Virginia Beach, though its most populous subdivision is Fairfax County, part of Northern Virginia, where slightly over a third of Virginia's population of 8.72Â million live as of 2023.
The story of Pocahontas was simplified and romanticized by later artists and authors, including Smith himself, and promoted by her descendants, some of whom married into elite colonial families.
In 1699, after the statehouse in Jamestown was destroyed by fire, the Colony of Virginia's capitol was moved to Williamsburg, where the College of William & Mary was founded six years earlier.
In 1765, Patrick Henry led a protest of the unpopular Stamp Act in the House of Burgesses, later depicted in this portrait by Peter F. Rothermel.
Eyre Crowe's 1853 portrait, Slaves Waiting for Sale: Richmond, Virginia, which he completed after visiting Richmond's slave markets, where thousands were sold annually