Fredericksburg Battlefield Visitor Center

The Battle of Fredericksburg was fought December 11–15, 1862, when Union soldiers crossed open ground toward a sunken road where Confederate infantry waited behind a stone wall. They came in waves. None reached the wall. The Confederate line held. The result was a one-sided defeat for the Union Army of the Potomac.

That sunken road is where the Fredericksburg Battlefield Visitor Center sits now, on ground the National Park Service has managed since 1927 as part of the Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania National Military Park — which commemorates not only the December 1862 battle but also Chancellorsville, the Wilderness, and Spotsylvania Court House. The center runs a 20-minute film on the four battles and staffs exhibits on soldiers and civilians who endured the fighting. Rangers lead walks down the sunken road where the heaviest action occurred, then loop back through the national cemetery on Marye's Heights, where more than 15,000 Union soldiers are buried, including many unidentified soldiers in mass graves.

The park preserves Chatham Manor east of downtown, an 18th-century plantation the Union Army used as a field hospital during the battle. All sites are free.