Hollywood Cemetery

One of the finest Victorian garden cemeteries in America, Hollywood occupies a dramatic hillside above the James River with views across the water to the Manchester neighbourhood on the south bank. Buried here are two U.S. presidents (James Monroe and John Tyler), Jefferson Davis (president of the Confederacy), and 18,000 Confederate soldiers, as well as a who's-who of Virginia's 19th-century political and artistic life.

The cemetery is still active and open daily for visitors. Self-guided walking maps are available at the entrance. The landscape — rolling hills, ancient oaks, river views — is genuinely beautiful, and the combination of national history and natural setting makes it one of the more interesting places in Richmond.

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The cemetery's most visited monument is the 90-foot pyramid of rough granite blocks built in 1869 as a memorial to the 18,000 Confederate soldiers buried here. It was constructed without mortar — the blocks are held together only by gravity and their own weight. A cast-iron dog sits at one grave in the soldiers' section; legend holds that it moves on its own. The dog has been there since the 1890s and no one is quite sure who put it there or why.

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