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Want more than the self-guided visit? Purchase your tickets in advance for a guided tour of Gadsby’s Tavern Museum! With your tour guide, you’ll explore life in the new Republic and learn more about the many people of the tavern. These 45-minute tours begin on the quarter after the hour. Recommended for ages 8 and older.

Visitors are welcome to wear masks if they choose, but masks are only required when Alexandria has substantial or high transmission of COVID-19.



For City Residents, Friends members, and others who receive free guided tour admission, please call the Museum directly at 703.746.4242 to reserve your time slot in advance. If leaving a voicemail, include preferred date and time of tour, name, number of spaces, phone number, and email address. The time is reserved once you receive confirmation.

Purchase your tickets in advance for a guided tour of the Apothecary! These 45-minute tours begin every hour starting quarter after the hour, and includes first and second floors with an expert guide. Recommended for ages 8 and older.

Visitors are welcome to wear masks if they choose, but masks are only required when Alexandria has substantial or high transmission of COVID-19.



For City Residents, Friends members, and others who receive free guided tour admission, please call the Museum directly at 703.746.3852 to reserve your time slot in advance. If leaving a voicemail, include preferred date and time of tour, name, number of spaces, phone number, and email address. The time is reserved once you receive confirmation.

The Freedom House Museum is what remains of a large complex dedicated to trafficking thousands of Black men, women, and children from 1828 - 1861. This Museum honors the lives and experiences of the enslaved and free Black people who lived in and were trafficked through Alexandria. Slavery, race-based laws, and racial terror erased and diminished African American history and contributions from the national narrative; however, this Museum seeks to reframe white supremacist history.

Admission is required to visit the 3 floors of the Freedom House Museum. Due to high demand, we highly encourage you to purchase tickets in advance and not at the door.

Join the Alexandria-Caen Sister City Committee in the Lloyd House Garden for a spectacular afternoon celebrating the rich cultural exchange between France & America through the universal language of jazz! Dance to a live Jazz Band and immerse yourself in the world of jazz with Smithsonian lecturer Paul Glenshaw, co-director of the upcoming documentary “Jazz in Paris.” Indulge in exquisite French crêpes paired with sparkling wines and ciders from our “Crêpes and Bubbles Bar.” Scavenger hunt, games and an auction to benefit Alexandria - Caen Exchange Students. Tickets are $55 / $22 for children 17 and under / Children 5 and under are free (no ticket required). The rain date is Sunday, May 5. Please note, dogs are not permitted, except for guide dogs.
In commemoration of the 250th anniversary of the Marquis de Lafayette’s 1824-25 tour of the United States, enjoy a lecture/concert of music from Lafayette’s lifetime performed on early 19th-century instruments. Join researchers and historical-performance specialists Dominic Giardino (historical clarinets) and Dr. Chris Troiano (serpent) to experience the music that underscored Lafayette’s French Revolutionary career. The Age of Revolutions (1775–1848) was a period of social, political, and cultural turbulence in Europe and the Americas. There was perhaps no greater witness to this era of dramatic change than Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette. This lecture/performance, with Lafayette’s leadership of the Garde Nationale Parisienne as the focal point, will transport listeners to the desperate but optimistic early days of the French Revolution when music left the aristocratic great rooms of Versailles and poured onto the streets of Paris.
Please join us for a moderated program featuring Diana Carlin, Anita McBride, and Nancy Kegan Smith, co-authors of a new book, "Remember the First Ladies: The Legacies of America's History-Making Women." The book illustrates First Ladies’ unique position to influence American society, policy, diplomacy, and life in the White House and illuminates how many of them broke barriers to make a mark on our country and, at times, the world. A book signing will follow the program.
Special guest lecturer, Dr. Kim Bernard Holien, U.S. Army Historian (Retired). This is the true story of a top-secret mission in Normandy, France, that paved the way for a successful Allied invasion on “D-Day.” In 2024, decades after their mission, soldiers of the “Ghost Army” received the highest civilian honor of the United States, the Congressional Gold Medal, for their clever tactics outwitting the enemy in the most unlikely ways. Their tactics were unconventional, including inflatable convoys, sound effects, fake radio shows and misinformation. In the Spring of 1944, General George S. Patton was put in command of the phantom First United States Army Group in England. FUSAG, as it was known, was created to deceive the German High Command and the Nazi Party leadership as to the day and location of the Invasion of France. A war game had been held in March of 1944 in Caen, Normandy, during which all but one member of the Axis leadership proclaimed that the Allies would land at Calais. The only person who stated that they would land at Normandy was Adolf Hitler. How & why were the Nazis fooled? As Sir Walter Scott wrote: "Oh, what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive." Come and learn how the Allies weaved the web that held the German 15th Army at Calais, ensuringvictory in Normandy.
From Fort Sumter to Appomattox, Confederates bought and sold thousands of men, women, and children through a surviving trade in slaves. Even though the war destroyed the cotton economy that had long underpinned American slavery and fueled the slave trade, Confederates used slave commerce to shape their experiences of the war, whether to help them mobilize for the conflict or to weather the numerous crises it created. Some speculated wildly in human property to ward off inflation or to buy shares in the slaveholding future for which they fought. Still others traded people to keep them from achieving the freedom the war offered. For those held in slavery, meanwhile, the surviving slave trade dramatically shaped the ways in which they encountered liberty, yanking many back into bondage while inspiring others to risk flight. The Civil War slave trade thus profoundly shaped the experience of the conflict for all residents of the South. Regardless of the choices they made—to buy or to sell people, to risk sale or to flee from it—the effects of the slave trade reverberated throughout the conflict and produced legacies that endured long after the guns fell silent.
Dr. Robert Colby is an assistant professor at the University of Mississippi. His work on the domestic slave trade during the Civil War has won the Society of American Historians’ Allan Nevins Prize and the Anthony Kaye Memorial Essay Award and Anne J. Bailey Prize from the Society of Civil War Historians. He was also a finalist for the Southern Historical Association's C. Vann Woodward Award. Dr. Colby is the author of An Unholy Traffic: Slave Trading in the Civil War South.