Williamsburg, VA

Williamsburg was the capital of colonial Virginia, and it remains the eighteenth century's largest working address: Colonial Williamsburg, the restored historic area begun with Rockefeller money in 1926, is the biggest living-history museum in the world — hundreds of original and reconstructed buildings along Duke of Gloucester Street, where costumed interpreters debate revolution, blacksmiths hammer, and the Governor's Palace and Capitol frame the town where Patrick Henry thundered and the Virginia Resolves were passed.

The town's living institution is even older: the College of William & Mary, chartered in 1693 as America's second-oldest college, taught Jefferson, Monroe and Tyler; its Wren Building is the oldest academic building in continuous use in the United States, and in its Raleigh Tavern days the college's students founded Phi Beta Kappa in 1776 — the nation's first academic honour society, born in Williamsburg. The archive's stage completes the circle: Phi Beta Kappa Memorial Hall, the college's principal theatre, named for the society founded on the spot, has long hosted the concerts, opera tours and lectures of the campus and town — Glenn Close trod its boards as a student. With Jamestown and Yorktown at either end of the Colonial Parkway, Williamsburg keeps the republic's first draft in daily rehearsal.