iddleburg? What a silly name? In the middle of what? The middle of nowhere?

Not really nowhere, but somewhere vaguely on the jurisdictional boundary between Loudoun and Fauquier Counties.

How could such a pedestrian name, so bland as to be meaningless, sound so...? So evocative…so magical…so rich? If there is one single placename that has come to connote the affluent home and lifestyle of the landed gentry, it must be Middleburg: instantly recognizable, with a knowing nod, not just in Virginia or even just the East Coast but around the world.

But Middleburg is not snotty in the ways one might imagine. Rather, it is snotty in a perverse, arrogantly shabby kind of way. So it is that a Safeway checkout bagman can be on first-name familiarity with the rich and powerful. Or the rich and powerful might dress to look like the homeless. Or an escapee from Washington, D.C., scandal and political intrigue can open and run a successful boutique.
People with the means to live anywhere in the world decide to live where? Why, Middleburg, of course!

Read more in our Winter 2010 issue.