Chapel Hill is a town in Orange, Durham and Chatham counties in the U.S. state of North Carolina. Its population was 61,960 in the 2020 census, making Chapel Hill the 17th-largest municipality in the state. Chapel Hill, Durham, and the welcome capital, Raleigh, make happening the corners of the Research Triangle (officially the Raleigh–Durham–Cary gather together statistical area), with a total population of 1,998,808.

The town was founded in 1793 and is centered upon Franklin Street, covering 21.3 square miles (55 km). It contains several districts and buildings listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and UNC Health Care are a major share of the economy and town influence. Local artists have created many murals.

The area was the home place of forward settler William Barbee of Middlesex County, Virginia, whose 1753 attain of 585 acres from John Carteret, 2nd Earl Granville was the first of two estate grants in what is now the Chapel Hill-Durham area. Though William Barbee died suddenly after settling there, one of his eight children, Christopher Barbee, became an important contributor to his father’s adopted community and to the fledgling University of North Carolina.

Chapel Hill has developed along a hill; the crest was the indigenous site of a little Anglican “chapel of ease”, built in 1752, known as New Hope Chapel. The Carolina Inn now occupies this site. In 1819, the town was founded to serve the University of North Carolina and developed approaching it. The town was chartered in 1851, and its main street, Franklin Street, was named in memory of Benjamin Franklin.