US Map / Cities / Virginia Beach

Virginia Beach Map

Virginia Beach is Virginia's most populous city and covers a whole former county: the town and Princess Anne County merged in 1963, giving it about 455,000 residents in 2024.

Where is Virginia Beach?

Where Chesapeake Bay meets the Atlantic at Cape Henry, Virginia Beach takes up the southeastern corner of Virginia, with the North Carolina line as its southern boundary. It adjoins Norfolk about 18 miles west and Chesapeake to the southwest; Richmond is roughly 105 miles northwest and Washington some 200 miles north.

Virginia Beach at a glance

Another 32,206 residents would lift Virginia Beach past Miami into No. 42; 3,907 fewer would put it behind Long Beach at No. 44. It leads the four Virginia entries, ahead of Chesapeake, Richmond and Norfolk. Against Virginia's 8.81 million residents, though, that is only about 5%. Being an independent city it is its own county-level unit, so on the county map Virginia Beach city stands beside the counties rather than inside one.

Virginia Beach in Virginia

Virginia is unusual in that its cities are not part of any county, and Virginia Beach is the largest of those independent cities — on the Virginia county map it appears as its own unit rather than inside one. Three of the four Virginia cities in the national top 100 sit side by side here in Hampton Roads, with only Richmond, the capital, elsewhere. The Virginia state page explains the independent-city system and the rest of the state.

Where the bay meets the ocean

Cape Henry marks the southern side of the entrance to Chesapeake Bay, the largest estuary in the country, and the deep natural channel just inside it is the reason the navy and the shipyards are here rather than further up the Atlantic coast. The city has some 35 miles of shoreline split between ocean beach and bay beach. Inland the ground is flat, sandy and barely above sea level, and the southern half of the city runs into farmland and the edge of the Great Dismal Swamp — the reason a city this populous still looks half-rural on a map.

Cities near Virginia Beach

Neighboring cities: Norfolk, Chesapeake, Richmond, Raleigh and Baltimore. The US map with cities shows how the Hampton Roads cluster sits on the national list.