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Danville is an independent city on the Dan River in southern Virginia, directly on the North Carolina state line - not to be confused with Danville, Illinois.

The city began as Wynne's Falls, a gathering place for Revolutionary War veterans on land settled by William Wynne, and it was renamed Danville in 1793 as a tobacco warehouse was built there; a town charter followed in 1830.

Danville's population was 42,590 at the 2020 census, down from 43,055 in 2010, and Census QuickFacts counted about 19,066 households in its 2020-2024 data.

For eight days, April 3-10, 1865, Danville served as the last capital of the Confederacy after Richmond fell, and Jefferson Davis issued his final proclamation from Maj. William T. Sutherlin's mansion on Main Street.

The Sutherlin mansion where Davis stayed is now the Danville Museum of Fine Arts and History.

Danville became a major bright-leaf tobacco market, and the 'Danville System' of loose-leaf tobacco auctions was developed in its warehouses, including Neal's Warehouse.

Lady Astor, the first woman to sit in the British House of Commons, was born in Danville in 1879.

Riverside Cotton Mills, founded in 1882 by six local businessmen, grew into Dan River, Inc. - for many years the largest single-unit textile mill in the world - which employed around 14,000 people at its peak.

Averett University, one of the city's anchor institutions, was chartered in 1859 as Union Female College and became Averett University on July 1, 2001.

Danville Community College, founded in 1966 from predecessors that included the Danville Textile School and the Danville Division of Virginia Tech, serves the city and Pittsylvania and Halifax counties.