The Rising Sun Tavern is a restored colonial tavern on Caroline Street, built in the 1760s and operated as a public house from approximately 1792 to around 1820. It is now a museum run by the Association for the Preservation of Virginia Antiquities, offering costumed guided tours that do a good job of conveying what a busy 18th-century tavern actually smelled, sounded, and functioned like.
The building itself is one of the best-preserved examples of colonial tavern architecture in Virginia, with its original wide-plank floors, massive fireplace, and bar area intact. The guides play the role of tavern wenches and tell the story of the trade — the gossip, the politics, the card games, the traveling merchants and soldiers who passed through — with enough humor to keep it from feeling like a dry history lesson. It is one of three colonial house museums on the same historic stretch of Caroline Street; the others are the Hugh Mercer Apothecary and the James Monroe Museum.