Virginia State Capitol

The Virginia State Capitol in Richmond is one of the most historically significant public buildings in the United States, designed by Thomas Jefferson in collaboration with French architect Charles-Louis Clérisseau and modeled on the Maison Carrée, a Roman temple completed in Nîmes, France, around 16 BCE. Construction began in 1785, and the building was first occupied by the Virginia General Assembly in 1788, making it the first government building in the world to adopt a classical temple form—a design decision that profoundly influenced American civic architecture, including the eventual design of the U.S. Capitol. The building has housed the Virginia General Assembly continuously since 1788, making it the oldest continuously occupied legislative building in the Western Hemisphere still serving its original legislative body. During the Civil War, the Capitol served as the seat of the Confederate government from 1861 to 1865, and the Confederate Congress met in the House of Delegates chamber, giving the building a unique dual role in American constitutional history. The building witnessed one of the Civil War's most dramatic non-combat disasters when the gallery of the Capitol's General Court collapsed on April 27, 1870, killing 62 people and injuring more than 200. The Capitol's central Rotunda houses Jean-Antoine Houdon's life-size marble statue of George Washington, commissioned in 1784 and executed from life sittings at Mount Vernon—the only statue for which Washington posed in person. Art historians consider it one of the finest portrait sculptures in American art. Busts of the seven other Virginia-born U.S. presidents surround Washington in the Rotunda. A major expansion and restoration completed in 2007 added modern legislative facilities beneath and around the original structure. The Old House Chamber, where Robert E. Lee accepted command of Virginia's forces in April 1861, is restored to its mid-19th-century appearance and interpreted as a historic room open to visitors.