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State bird, cardinal.    State flower, dogwood
State tree, dogwood.

When you look at the names of the towns to the left, even if you don't know much about history, they will seem familiar, because of so many: books, TV shows and movies about the civil war mention their names time and time again.

Richmond  was about destroyed in the civil war; today it's small, with some good museums, and is a good starting point for seeing Virginia. The majority of the colonial sites are concentrated just to the east, in what is known as the Historic Triangle. Here is what is left of Jamestown , the original colony, Williamsburg , the colonial capital, and Yorktown , site of the last battle of the Revolutionary War, within half an hour's drive of each other. Another historic center, Thomas Jefferson's Charlottesville , sits at the foot of the beautiful Blue Ridge Mountains ,  west of Richmond. An attractive small college town, it's also within easy reach of the  splendors of Shenandoah National Park and the little towns of the western valleys. Northern Virginia , often visited as a day trip from Washington DC, features several posh suburbs and a number of restored historic homes, the closest colonial architecture to the capital in Alexandria , and Manassas , the scene of two important Civil War battles.

Appommattox is the place at which papers were signed to officially end the Civil War , and is now preserved as an engaging national historic site. To the west, the northern Blue Ridge Mountains, crowned by the dense forests of Shenandoah National Park , run south to Tennessee

location at the broad mouth of the Chesapeake Bay, and an extensive deep-water harbor made colonial NORFOLK the main American trading port, and in the eighteenth century it was the largest city in Virginia.

Norfolk sits midway along the coast at the point where the Chesapeake Bay empties into the Atlantic Ocean. Virginia's only heavily industrial center, it is not a particularly pretty place, but it does have a rich maritime and naval heritage, as well as the Chrysler Museum, one of the nation's best art galleries. Fifteen miles east of Norfolk, along the open Atlantic, low-key Virginia Beach draws summer sun-seekers to the state's only real resort, surrounded by broad beaches and tidal marshlands.

The rest of Virginia's Atlantic coast is on its isolated and sparsely populated Eastern Shore , where the attractive little island town of Chincoteague serves as the headquarters of a wildlife refuge that straddles the Maryland border and forms part of the Assateague Island National Seashore

Richmond and the Chesapeake Bay tidewater are, in many ways, where the US was born. Not only does this fairly compact area hold some of the most important surviving colonial-era sites, it is also where the strength of the nation was tested by the Civil War. The greatest interest is to be found in the compact Historic Triangle , east of Richmond, and in Fredericksburg , to the north, around which several crucial battles were waged.

Northern Virginia , almost all of which lies within commuting distance of Washington DC, holds some extremely exclusive suburbs, including McLean and the rest of Fairfax County, which are home to a high proportion of US senators. In contrast, Alexandria , nestled on the Potomac just beyond the limits of the nation's capital, seems at least two centuries removed from the modern political whirl. Further afield, this Anglophile heartland of Virginia's landed gentry - often called "Hunt Country" for their love of horses and fancy-dress blood sports - holds well-preserved eighteenth- and nineteenth-century stately homes, cottages, churches, barns and taverns tucked away along the quiet back roads. It's all very popular with tourists, nowhere more so than Mount Vernon , the longtime home of George Washington, while Manassas to the west was the site of the bloody battles of Bull Run.

Blue Ridge Mountains form a definite barrier between the history-rich worlds of tidewater Virginia to the east and the rougher river-and-valley country to the west. In between the two, at the geographical center of the state, sits the friendly, manageably small college town of Charlottesville , which holds two great monuments to the mind of Thomas Jefferson . South of Charlottesville, the village of Appommattox is the place at which papers were signed to officially end the Civil War , and is now preserved as an engaging national historic site. To the west, the northern Blue Ridge Mountains, crowned by the dense forests of Shenandoah National Park , run south to Tennessee, culminating in 5729ft Mount Rogers. Little seems to have changed in the lush Shenandoah Valley, on the far side of the mountains, since it was a vital battleground during the Civil War.

I-81, the main highway through the Shenandoah Valley, is joined in the north by I-66 from Washington DC and in the middle by I-64 from Richmond through Charlottesville. Numerous scenic routes are slower but more worthwhile, such as Skyline Drive and the Blue Ridge Parkway , which weave along the four-hundred-mile-long mountain crest. You'll need a car to get the most out of the region, though cycling is a good option along the many back roads and, for hikers, the Appalachian Trail runs right down the middle. There are plenty of roadside motels, so you needn't be too concerned about advance planning - it's a great place for aimless exploration.