Earlier this year, the Williamsburg area landed in the 12th position on The New York Times’ 52 Places to Go in 2019 guide.
Now Williamsburg is back in The Times this week, in a follow up for its “52 Places” travel guide.
NYT reporter Sebastian Modak traveled to Columbus, Ohio and Williamsburg recently as part of the 52 Places yearlong coverage.
“Before beginning this journey, I didn’t realize how often I’d be traversing time, as well as space,” Modak wrote in the article, which was published March 26 and will appear in print March 31.
“But nowhere has the demarcation between past and future been as clear to me as it was in Columbus, Ohio, a city obsessed with its future, and in Williamsburg, Va., a place dedicated to its past, even as it reassesses it,” he continued.
Modak first visited Colonial Williamsburg, where he became “giddy with excitement” as interpreters greeted him and he watched musket loading and firing demonstrations. Modak did not grow up in the United States, he wrote.
Modak wrote he was inspired to find history “isn’t dead” in the Historic Triangle — instead, it is evolving as the area acknowledges other, lesser-known parts of history.
The writer discussed the 1619 Commemoration that features events throughout the region, specifically the ones commemorating the arrival of the first Africans in Jamestown and the organization of the first representative government in the New World.
Modak also viewed the exhibition at the Colonial Williamsburg Raleigh Tavern commemorating 40 years of African-American interpretation.
RELATED STORY: Colonial Williamsburg recognizes 18th-century African-American residents by name in new exhibition
On his final day in Williamsburg, Modak visited with Jamestown Rediscovery archaeologists at the settlement of Jamestown, where there is evidence of slavery and the first documented slave in the U.S.
In a list midway through the article, Modak mentions several other places and exhibits he enjoyed, including:
- The American Revolution Museum at Yorktown
- The Tenacity exhibit at Jamestown Settlement
- Amber Ox Public House
“Here in the Historic Triangle, I had learned more about early American history in four days than I had in 30 years,” Modak wrote.
