Charlottesville & UVa

Local Image  Charlottesville was settled in the eighteenth century on a hill overlooking the Rivanna River. It was named in honor of Queen Charlotte, the young wife of George III, and serves as the seat of Albemarle County. The town is nestled between the Blue Ridge Mountains and the Appalachian Trail to the north and Monticello, home of Thomas Jefferson, to the south. Today, Charlottesville is a small, thriving university town that has kept up with the well-cultivated tastes of its inhabitants. Charlottesville offers a wide range of cultural and recreational activities.

For those who enjoy the outdoors, the nearby Blue Ridge Mountains and rivers provide easy access for hiking, fishing, camping, rafting and even skiing. 
 There are a large number of golf courses available including a first-rate public course and the University of Virginia course, Birdwood, to which residents have access. The town and the University have an impressive number of tennis courts, as well. For a small city, Charlottesville has a wide variety of excellent restaurants, clubs, and movie theaters. A fine skating rink has recently been constructed in the historic downtown area. Notably, the downtown area is safe, interesting, and thriving in spite of the continued growth of shopping malls out of town.   Local Image
 
 Local Image

For those who wish to travel out of town for a day or two, Washington D.C. with its awesome number of museums and cultural opportunities is 2-2 1/2 hours away. Other places to visit include Richmond (1 1/2 hours), Williamsburg (3 hours) and Virginia Beach (3 1/2- 4 hours). Baltimore's Camden Yards can be reached in 3 hours. Charlottesville airport has connections to many cities and the Amtrak station has daily rail service.

The University provides opportunities for cultural and intellectual stimulation, as well as sports and recreation. Among the former are several film series, a surprisingly good University-Community orchestra and the Tuesday Evening Concert series which brings artists such as Pinchas Zuckerman, Joshua Bell and the Guarneri String Quartet (all here in the last couple of years) to Charlottesville.

 The cultural sophistication of the town is somewhat astounding. In addition to the presence of a major medical center, this is due to the University's business and law schools which are both top ten enterprises and the English department which is generally considered among the nation's top three along with Yale and Berkeley.  Local Image

 Local Image  Recreational opportunities include the aforementioned golf and tennis facilities as well as a number of gymnasiums and swimming pools available to residents for a small fee. The University has just opened a splendid new swimming facility. The University of Virginia is also a national powerhouse in several sports including football, men and women's basketball, soccer, and lacrosse. Season tickets for football at a reduced rate are available to housestaff.

 A collection of student shops, bookstores, eateries, and night spots, the Corner is the center of student life at The University of Virginia. Downtown Charlottesville is the legal and financial hub of the community. A brick pedestrian mall extends for several blocks along Main Street through the heart of the historic downtown district and features a variety of shops and restaurants.  Local Image

In the years since The University of Virginia was founded in 1819, hundreds of thousands of students, faculty members and guests have met on the Grounds of the University of Virginia to exchange ideas, enlarge their understanding or simply deepen their appreciation of the beautiful buildings and gardens that Thomas Jefferson designed for The University of Virginia. In creating the academic village, Thomas Jefferson devised a symbol of his demanding conception of education.
A remarkable ensemble of pavilions, rooms, hotels, alleys and gardens all held in equilibrium by the Rotunda, Jefferson's use of architecture and open spaces illustrates the adaptation of classical forms to modern tastes and uses. In this way, the Lawn mirrored the original curriculum of the University, which combined such traditional studies as ancient languages and moral philosophy with the new disciplines of natural history and medicine.   The University of Virginia is consistently rated among the best public institutions in the country, achieving natural stature for its teaching, research and public service without sacrificing the intimacy that characterizes the academic village. The University is a state-supported institution that derives about 17 percent of its funding from state tax revenues. Local Image
The University's ten degree-granting schools are the School of Architecture, the College of Arts and Sciences, the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, the Colgate Darden Graduate School of Business Administration, the McIntire School of Commerce, the Curry School of Education, the School of Engineering and Applied Science, the School of Law, the School of Medicine and the School of Nursing.  Total student enrollment is approximately 18,006, made up of 11,500 undergraduates and 6,500 graduate students. The School of Medicine and The University of Virginia Health Sciences Center are located on the Grounds as an integral part of The University of Virginia.

 Outside magazine has featured Charlottesville several times over the past 5 years, including a #2 position in North America's Dream Towns. Money magazine ranked Charlottesville as the #1 small town in the Southeast to live in 1998.