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Staunton (pronounced STAN-tən) is an independent city in the heart of Virginia's Shenandoah Valley, completely surrounded by Augusta County but governed separately from it, as all Virginia independent cities are.

Staunton was founded in 1747 and named in honor of Lady Rebecca Staunton, wife of William Gooch, an early colonial governor of Virginia; it was incorporated as a city in 1871.

Staunton briefly served as the capital of Virginia in June 1781, when the General Assembly fled west ahead of British forces during the Revolutionary War.

Staunton had a population of 25,750 at the 2020 census, and Census Bureau survey data for 2020-2024 counted about 11,309 households averaging just 2.14 people each, with about 60.9% of homes owner-occupied.

Staunton is the birthplace of Woodrow Wilson, the 28th president of the United States, who was born there on December 28, 1856; his birthplace home is now the Woodrow Wilson Presidential Library and Museum.

In 1908 Staunton became the first city in the United States to adopt a fully defined city manager form of government, a system it still uses today.

Staunton is home to Mary Baldwin University, founded in 1842 as the Augusta Female Seminary and long known as a women's college before going co-educational, and to Stuart Hall, which dates to the 1840s and is described as Virginia's oldest college-preparatory school for girls.

The Virginia School for the Deaf and the Blind, founded in Staunton in 1839, still operates in the city.

Staunton's American Shakespeare Center performs in the Blackfriars Playhouse, the world's only re-creation of Shakespeare's indoor theatre, completed in 2001.

The Frontier Culture Museum, an outdoor living-history museum on the edge of the city, recreates farmsteads from England, Ireland, Germany, and West Africa alongside early American farms to tell the story of Shenandoah Valley settlers.