Grand Illumination at Colonial Williamsburg Guide

On successive Saturdays in December, Colonial Williamsburg stages Grand Illumination — the moment the entire Historic Area lights up in 18th-century fashion, a tradition dating to the 1930s. At dusk, candles glow in every window, cressets and bonfires flare in the streets, fifes and drums march, and the evening builds to fireworks bursting over the Governor’s Palace and the Capitol at opposite ends of the restored colonial town. It’s the anchor of Williamsburg’s whole holiday season, when the city is dressed in period greenery — apple-and-pineapple door decorations, magnolia and boxwood — and the effect of candlelight over 18th-century streets is genuinely something. It’s the prettiest night of the year in the Historic Triangle.