Monticello is located about an hour and 20 minute drive from the airport in Richmond Virginia (RIC) or about 2 hours from Dulles Washington Airport in Washington DC, (IAD). Tickets can be purchased online or in person – a Monticello day pass includes a guided tour of the first floor of Jefferson’s iconic home. And additional ticket can be purchased for tours of the upper floor. Shuttle vans leave regularly for the approximately 1/2 a mile ride up to the home. Highlights of the house tour include the main parlour, the dining room, seeing the library which at one point housed over 6,500 books, Jefferson’s bed and room where he died and Jefferson’s polygraph (while Jefferson wrote with one pen, a second pen duplicated his writing creating a second copy – he wrote nearly 19,000 letters over his lifetime).
Other highlights include, on a clear day a gorgeous lookout point above the gardens from the Garden Pavilion, a small brick building with plenty of windows that was often used by Jefferson – reading books or simply admiring the expansive view. Also worth visiting, is a small cemetery containing Jefferson’s grave site, an exhibit in the South Wing next to the house about the properties’ most famous slave, Sally Hemings who had a child with Jefferson and the excavated kitchen, also in the South Wing. For more information, visit: www.monticello.org
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