Winter Wander 2023

Due to the weather forecast, the Richmond Night Market’s Holiday Villages is cancelled for Winter Wander 2023. There is still plenty to do inside the Valentine despite the weather!

Join the Valentine and the Richmond Night Market for some holiday cheer on our picturesque block of East Clay Street! The Richmond Night Market will feature a diverse array of vendors and local artisans, plus enjoy entertainment, refreshments, family crafts and games. Tour the historic Court End neighborhood and hop on a shuttle to visit nearby cultural sites for open houses and other activities.

This event is FREE and open to the public.

Enjoy free admission and special tours at other historic sites including:

John Marshall House
The 1790 John Marshall House served as the home of the father of the Supreme Court and his family, as well as an urban site of enslavement for 60 men, women and children over the course of 50 years. A Federal brick home, the John Marshall House is furnished in over 50% original family objects. Preservation Virginia owns the John Marshall House and has operated it as a public museum since 1913.

The American Civil War Museum’s White House of the Confederacy
Built in 1818, this National Historic Landmark served as the Confederate Executive Mansion during the war. Guided tours of the restored house – the elegant public rooms as well as the private living quarters – explore the lives of the people who lived and worked there.

Monumental Church
Completed in 1814, Monumental Church, a National Historic Landmark, was designed by the first native-born architect Robert Mills. It is a civic space built by a community devastated by the tragedy of the Richmond Theatre Fire (1811) to honor their fellow citizens lost in one of the worst urban tragedies of American History of the time.

Masons’ Hall
With its cornerstone laid in 1785 Masons’ Hall is one of Richmond’s most historic landmarks and was an important gathering place in Richmond’s early history and hosted many of the men that helped forge our nation. It has the distinction of being the oldest Masonic lodge building in America. After undergoing significant restorations over the past few years, Masons’ Hall once again stands as a crown jewel in Shockoe Bottom, the neighborhood that grew up around it. It is open to the public just a few times a year and is still home to an active and vibrant Masonic lodge, Richmond Randolph No.19.

St. Paul’s Church
St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, a parish of the Diocese of Virginia, is a historic church in Richmond, Virginia, located across from the State Capitol. Built in 1845 on East Grace Street, the building was listed on the Virginia Landmarks Register in 1968 and on the National Register of Historic Places in 1969.

The Poe Museum
The Poe Museum began over a century ago when an Edgar Allan Poe collector and researcher named James Howard Whitty and a group of literary enthusiasts met in Poe’s hometown of Richmond, Virginia to create the state’s first monument to a writer. The Poe Museum opened to the public in 1922, featuring the Old Stone House and Enchanted Garden. The Museum’s Founders were inspired by Poe’s poem “To One in Paradise.”

The Valentine First Freedom Center
The Valentine First Freedom Center is located at 14 South 14th Street on the same corner where Virginia’s General Assembly met in secret during the American Revolution and explores the past, present and future of religious freedom in America.

Performances for the day include:

Richmond Ballet’s Minds in Motion Ambassadors – Cancelled Due to Weather
Minds In Motion Ambassadors is made up of over 40 advanced Minds In Motion students in 5th and 6th grades who participate in an after-school scholarship class twice a week. This diverse group of youthful, high-energy dancers learn to combine movement and rhythmic patterning into exciting and intricate choreography.

Virginia Opera’s Musical Storytime
Virginia Opera’s new engaging and educational series, Musical Storytime, promotes children’s literacy, combines children’s fairytale stories and other fictional works with clever adaptations of well-known and accessible opera selections woven into the stories. This interactive program is a unique opportunity to bring together the art of storytelling through words and music to everyone!

Klezm’Or’Ami’m
Klezmer musicians from Congregation Or Ami! Klezmer is dance party music with a Jewish soul.  It started in Eastern Europe in the last century when small groups of wandering musicians – usually clarinetists, trumpet players and violinists – traveled from village to village, playing for both Jewish and non-Jewish events and audiences.  Klezmer arrived in America beginning in the early 1900’s and adopted a few of the customs of its new homeland, most notably, the piano.