Step into Attics and Alleyways with New Alexandria Tour

Attics and Alleys is a new three-hour walking tour featuring the rarely seen spaces of four sites—the Lee-Fendall House, Gadsby's Tavern Museum, the Stabler-Leadbeater Apothecary Museum and Carlyle House.

This behind-the-scenes access is in honor of National Preservation Month and Virginia's Year of the Historic Home. Tickets are limited.

Tours will be offered every Saturday in May beginning at 9 a.m. at the ., and ending around noon at Tickets are $25 per person, $20 for volunteers and friends group members of any of the four participating sites.

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For information and tickets, contact Gadsby's Tavern Museum at 703-746-4242. Tickets for this event also can be purchased online at historicalexandria.org. Advance purchase recommended as space is limited. Tour includes stairs, access to confined spaces and walking many city blocks, including through alleys. Walking shoes required.

Beginning at the Lee-Fendall House, learn the meaning of the words "shabby dwelling" when you pass through the original service quarters of the home and see how staff would have been on call.

Next, visitors walk to Gadsby's Tavern Museum, passing the townhomes of some of Alexandria's most prominent early citizens, including Lord Fairfax, Henry Lee, and George Washington. The "spite" house, built to enclose an alleyway and to adjoin two neighboring houses, is also an architectural curiosity. Gadsby's portion features access to the attic of the 1792 City Hotel building.

A short walk away is the Stabler-Leadbeater Apothecary Museum, which is opening the third floor of its 19th century pharmacy retail shop and laboratory for the first time in more than 70 years. The third floor is a turn-of-the-century time capsule of a wholesale drug business.

Visitors then wind their way through back alleys to see architectural elements from Alexandria's past and end at Carlyle House, climbing to the attic, which still bares the marks from when it was home to apartments for poorer families during the 19th century.