Richmond Map
Richmond stands at the point where the James River drops off the Piedmont in a mile of rapids — the last place a ship could reach, and therefore where the city was built.
Where is Richmond?
Richmond is in east-central Virginia, about 100 miles south of Washington on Interstate 95 and roughly 90 miles northwest of Norfolk and Virginia Beach on the coast. Charlotte is some 290 miles southwest, and Baltimore about 150 miles north. The city is the meeting point of I-95 running the length of the East Coast and I-64 running west to the Blue Ridge.
Richmond at a glance
| State | Virginia |
| County | None — Richmond is an independent city, outside any county |
| Population | 233,655 (2024 Census estimate) |
| Rank among US cities | No. 98 of the 100 largest |
| Time zone | Eastern Time |
| Region | South (South Atlantic division) |
Richmond in Virginia
Richmond is the capital of Virginia and, like the state's other cities, entirely independent of any county — Henrico County wraps around it to the north and east and Chesterfield County to the south, and both appear separately on the Virginia county map. That arrangement means the city's boundary has barely moved in decades while the suburbs beyond it grew, so the metro is much larger than the city. Virginia's other top-100 cities are all in Hampton Roads: Virginia Beach, Chesapeake and Norfolk. The Virginia state page explains the system.
The fall line on the James
The fall line is the boundary between the hard rock of the Piedmont and the soft sediments of the coastal plain, and every major river on the East Coast breaks into rapids where it crosses. On the James that break is at Richmond: ships from the Atlantic could come up the river this far and no further, and the falling water powered mills, so a port and a factory town grew on the same spot — the identical logic that put Washington, Baltimore and Philadelphia on their own fall lines. Tredegar Iron Works on the river below the rapids made Richmond the industrial center of the Confederacy, and was much of the reason the Confederate capital was moved here from Montgomery in 1861. The whitewater still runs through downtown, which is unusual for a city of this size.
Cities near Richmond
Along the corridor are Washington, Baltimore, Norfolk, Virginia Beach and Chesapeake; Winston-Salem and Greensboro lie southwest. Richmond is a state capital, so it also appears in the capitals quiz.