Maymont

Maymont was the estate of James and Sallie Dooley, a prominent Richmond couple who made their fortune in the boom years after the Civil War. In the late nineteenth century they built a lavish mansion on the hill and spent decades developing the surrounding grounds into gardens and landscaped parkland, sparing little expense.

The Dooleys had no children, and upon Sallie Dooley's death the estate passed to the city of Richmond to be kept as a public park. That act of generosity opened a private world of wealth and beauty to everyone, and Maymont has been enjoyed by the public ever since, a rare survival of a complete Gilded Age estate open to all.

The Maymont mansion is preserved much as the Dooleys lived in it, furnished with the art, decorative pieces, and treasures they gathered, so that a tour reads like a window into the tastes and excesses of America's Gilded Age. Its rooms show how the very wealthy of the era lived at the height of Richmond's post-war recovery.

In recent years Maymont has worked to tell a fuller story, sharing the lives of the domestic workers, many of them African American, whose labor made the estate run. The below-stairs spaces and their history are interpreted alongside the grand rooms, giving visitors a more honest and complete picture of the household and the society it belonged to.

The grounds are a landscape of pleasures. A formal Italian garden with fountains and pergolas contrasts with a serene Japanese garden of ponds, stone, and a cascading waterfall, and rolling lawns and specimen trees fill the slopes between. Walking from one garden to the next, past waterfalls and overlooks, is a highlight for many visitors.

Maymont also serves as a home for native Virginia wildlife that cannot be released, including black bear, bison, bobcat, deer, foxes, and birds of prey, displayed in habitats along the trails. A children's farm with barnyard animals adds a hands-on stop for families, making the estate as much a nature park as a historic house.

Maymont's setting above the James River gorge gives it long views and a sense of countryside within the city. The estate adjoins Byrd Park and other green spaces, so the surrounding area invites a longer day outdoors close to downtown.

The rest of Richmond is minutes away, from the James River Park System's islands and rapids to the museums, the state capitol, and the neighborhoods of the Fan and beyond. That makes Maymont an easy and rewarding centerpiece for a visit to a city that prizes both its history and its river.

The closest Boutel™ stays, so you can turn this stop into an overnight. Each is an independently owned, editorially selected place to stay.