Travel + Leisure readers still love Alexandria, but the city fell out of the top ten in this year’s Best in the U.S. ranking after multiple years among the elite.
Every year, the magazine hosts a World’s Best awards survey, with over 186,000 readers weighing in. The magazine said cities are rated on criteria like landmarks, culture, food and more.
California wine country marketer Todd O’Leary has been named the new president and CEO of Visit Alexandria.
O’Leary will replace Patricia Washington, who announced her retirement in December after leading the city’s tourism bureau for more than a decade. He was hired by the nonprofit’s board of governors after an executive search with SearchWide Global, and starts work on July 8, according to Visit Alexandria.
The historic cemetery tour: it’s the one locals are dying to get into.
A tour coming up this Saturday (April 27) will reacquaint Alexandrians with some of their post-mortem neighbors and hear buried histories of duels, cavalry battles and more in the Wilkes Street Cemetery Complex (1475-1501 Wilkes Street).
A new poll ranked Alexandria’s King Street as one of the best ‘main streets’ in America, though it got beat out by Alexandria’s travel destination rival.
The poll of 3,000 travelers by photo book site Mixbook put Alexandria’s King Street at #7 on the list of America’s Most Charming Main Streets.
Alexandria is one of the best small cities in the U.S., an argument bolstered by being listed in the top five for the last six years in Condé Nast Traveler’s 2024 Readers’ Choice Awards survey.
Staff from Visit Alexandria just got the city nominated for the seventh year in a row.
The Del Ray House and Garden Tour is returning this May for the first time since the Covid pandemic hit.
The tour returns on Saturday, May 11, from 11 a.m.-5 p.m. and offers visitors an inside look at everything from lavish homes to accessory dwelling units.
Update at 3:35 p.m. — The Interstellar Influencer commemorates the Chesapeake Bay impact crater, not the Chicxulub crater 35 million years earlier that caused the extinction of the dinosaurs
Earlier: The asteroid collision 35 million years ago will be the latest public art at Alexandria’s Waterfront Park.
A new temporary exhibit at Freedom House Museum until April documents the life of a teenager enslaved at Washington Seminary in D.C.
“Searching for Truth in the Garden” reveals a story of Gabriel, a 13-year-old boy who was enslaved at the school — later renamed Gonzaga College High School — in 1829.
Candlelight is one of the best ways of exploring a historic home, and staff at the Lee-Fendall House (614 Oronoco Street) are offering unique candlelight tours next month of the home’s Victorian-style holiday decorations.
On Friday, Dec. 15 and Saturday, Dec. 16, tours led by candlelight will explore Victorian-era decorations in the home.
With Alexandria’s consumption tax revenues hitting an all-time high in fiscal year 2023, Mayor Justin Wilson says that the city has emerged from the economic spiral created by the 2020 coronavirus pandemic.
The city’s consumption tax revenues (sales, meals and transient lodging) peaked at $81 million in fiscal year 2023, a 7% increase over the $76 million collected in FY 2022 and 23% more than the $66 million in FY 2019, according to figures presented at Visit Alexandria‘s annual meeting on Tuesday night.
It’s no surprise that, for the sixth straight year, Alexandria’s in the top five best small cities list in the Condé Nast Traveler Readers’ Choice Awards: but this year, Alexandria beat out Aspen and reclaimed its third place ranking.
Alexandria is third place behind Santa Fe, New Mexico and Charleston, South Carolina, which has become a tradition of the annual rankings.
