Discover the Raleigh Tavern

The Raleigh Tavern was a center of social and political life in Virginia’s 18th-century capital city. In its public and private rooms, the colony's leaders debated ideas, proposed laws, and enjoyed a few drinks.

The tavern was named in honor of Sir Walter Raleigh, an English explorer who was believed to have popularized tobacco in England, providing a basis for early Virginia’s economy. A leaden bust of Raleigh, like this one, hung above the front entrance.

Enslaved men and women performed the labor that kept the tavern operating day and night. They cooked, cleaned, washed linens, waited tables, cared for horses, drove carts, and managed the garden. There would have been no Raleigh Tavern without these skilled individuals.

The steps and porch of the Raleigh Tavern were frequently used for auctions in town. Enslaved people were regularly bought and sold on the steps of the Raleigh.

This 1774 advertisement in the Virginia Gazette, for example, documents the sale of ten enslaved people as part of an estate sale on the porch of the Raleigh Tavern.

Over time, the Apollo Room became an important public space in Williamsburg, a place for concerts, lectures, and other cultural events. Young Thomas Jefferson once described "dancing with Belinda in the Apollo," a reference to his teenage crush Rebecca Burwell.

In May 1774, a meeting of former Burgesses in the Raleigh Tavern proposed a limited boycott of Britain and called for a meeting of a “general congress,” which would become the First Continental Congress.

Virginians used the Raleigh to mourn and celebrate during the Revolutionary War. In 1776, Patrick Henry held a farewell dinner here with his officers after he resigned from the militia. In 1779, the people of Williamsburg first publicly celebrated George Washington's birthday at the Raleigh.

Gambling was illegal in public, but the law allowed “billiards, bowls, backgammon, chess, and draughts.”

Nevertheless, patrons played illegal games of dice and cards in private rooms. George Washington recorded winning money, likely from cards, after an “Evening in the Daphne."

After Virginia’s capital moved to Richmond in 1780, the Raleigh continued to operate. It was soon one of only two taverns in town.

In 1848, historian Benson Lossing visited the tavern as it was being renovated. He sketched the Apollo Room and wrote a description.

The Raleigh was destroyed in an 1859 fire, a decade after Lossing’s visit. His sketches, as well as archaeological excavations and estate inventories, provided the basis for the later reconstruction of the building.

In 1928, the holding company that would later become The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation acquired the Raleigh Tavern lot. Excavations of the tavern's foundations began later that year.

In September 1932, Colonial Williamsburg opened the Raleigh Tavern as its first exhibition site. Virginia’s Governor John Garland Pollard, show here, gave one of the addresses.

Among those at the dedication ceremony were two Williamsburg residents, Mrs. M. F. Timberlake and Captain L. W. Lane, who were old enough to remember the Raleigh Tavern before its destruction in 1859.

Over the years, the reconstructed Raleigh Tavern has been visited by millions of people, including Dwight Eisenhower (pictured seated far left) and Winston Churchill (pictured seated to right) in 1946.

The Raleigh Tavern stands today as a monument both to the events it hosted during the American Revolution, and the day-to-day work of running a tavern—a reminder that extraordinary things happen in ordinary places.