This historic, working-class neighborhood just south of the Fan blends gritty art school attitude with truly beautiful scenery. Its high position over the banks of the James gives you a pretty spectacular view of the river and Belle Isle. One of Richmond’s most beloved restaurants calls Oregon Hill home—L’Opossum, a kitschy, award-winning restaurant that has both an 8-foot reproduction of Michelangelo’s David and an edible Fabergé egg.

WHAT TO EXPECT

Hollywood Cemetery, a beautiful 19th-century garden cemetery that winds over 135 acres of valleys and hills. Its crypts and gravesites serve as the final resting places for presidents, governors, Supreme Court justices, suffragists, authors and more. Whether you tour it by car or on foot, be sure to check out President James Monroe’s Gothic Revival cast-iron canopy known as “the Birdcage.”

WHAT’S UNEXPECTED

We said earlier that this neighborhood has some kitsch, and nowhere is that more evident than at Christmastime, when things get tacky, fast. One of the city’s gaudiest and most mind-blowing displays of plastic is on Laurel Street. If you love 1940s blow molds of Santa, scary-looking nativity scenes and the leg lamp from A Christmas Story, you have to swing by this funky inferno.

CHECK IT OUT

See Oregon Hill through the eyes of different Richmonders as they show off their favorite spots.