Amy Mc Cluskey

Every December the home of Nick and Kimi Vlahakis in Governor’s Land transforms into a beautifully-decorated holiday masterpiece worthy of a magazine cover photo. Each room in the 6,700 square-foot European-villa style home offers a unique landscape of festive decorations ranging from a two-story Christmas tree to 5-foot tall Royal Guards complete with candy cane staffs to hand-painted wooden gingerbread men.

For decades, a brick house at the very end of Eagles Nest Road in Charles City County sat vacant and dilapidated. With no visible neighbors, the structure was easily forgotten about and was slowly being taken over by weeds and damaged by squatters. In the 1970s, it was close to being bulldozed when preservationists defended its historical importance.

Bacon’s Castle in Surry County can lay claim to many things. For starters, the 17th-century mansion is the oldest, brick dwelling still standing in North America; it is one of few remaining structures that has almost continuously been lived in for more than 300 years; it was used a fortress; and it is has – on many occasions – been described as “haunted.” Wealthy tobacco agent Arthur Allen built the mansion in 1665 and lived there with his family for four years until his death in 1669.