Colonial Williamsburg: A Living Museum.

Williamsburg, Jamestown, and Yorktown make up Virginia's Historic Triangle.  Known as Colonial Williamsburg, the area is the world's largest, and possibly greatest, living history museum.  Nowhere else do people take more care to create, re-create, and maintain a semblance of Pre-Revolutionary life in the United States.  Actors wear period clothing and interact with each other and the visiting public to simulate life in Williamsburg during the 17^th century.

Jamestown was the first capital of Virginia, but it lay in a low marsh area that compromised defenses against both hostile native people and malaria carrying mosquitoes.  The army moved some soldiers to nearby Middle Plantation, five miles away on a high point between the James and York Rivers.  In 1683, King William III and Queen Mary II granted a charter to the College of William and Mary, the colonies' second university (Harvard was the first).  In 1699, the settlement was renamed Williamsburg after the king and was declared the new colonial capital.  Williamsburg remained the capital until 1780, when Governor Thomas Jefferson moved the capital to Richmond.

Fast forward to the 20^th century.  Williamsburg's neglected center, the old capital, was fast decaying until a local pastor persuaded John D Rockefeller Jr., to take an interest.   Rockefeller quietly bought property and privately financed a plan for the city's restoration.  The result is today's 301-acre colonial village, where 88 original buildings were restored or repaired and nearly 500 buildings and outbuildings were reconstructed.  Colonial Williamsburg is a living museum, meaning while tourists visit museums; they are also invited to immerse themselves in another century and its homes, handicrafts, clothing, stores, taverns, gardens, and jails, as well as its people.