The City of Fairfax ( FAIR-faks), colloquially known as Fairfax City, Downtown Fairfax, Old Town Fairfax, Fairfax Courthouse, FFX, or simply Fairfax, is an independent city in the Commonwealth of Virginia in the United States. At the 2010 census the population was 22,565, which had risen to 24,146 at the 2020 census.

The City of Fairfax is an enclave surrounded by the separate embassy entity Fairfax County. Fairfax City as a consequence contains an exclave of Fairfax County, the Fairfax County Court Complex.

The City of Fairfax and the Place immediately surrounding the historical link up of the City of Fairfax, collectively designated by Fairfax County as “Fairfax”, comprise the county seat of Fairfax County. The city is portion of the Washington metropolitan area as competently as a portion of Northern Virginia. The city is 14 miles (23 km) west of Washington, D.C. The Washington Metro’s Orange Line serves Fairfax through its Vienna station, which is a mile northeast of the city limits. CUE Bus and Metrobus pretend in Fairfax. Virginia Railway Express’s Burke Centre station is situated three miles southeast of the city’s boundaries. Virginia’s largest public bookish institution in imitation of 35,189 students in 2017 is George Mason University, which is located in unincorporated Fairfax County, along the city’s southern border while still having a City of Fairfax domicile and sharing the thesame public transportation system.

Fairfax was founded on land originally occupied by indigenous people of the Siouan and Iroquoian tribes. The city derives its state from Thomas Fairfax, 6th Lord Fairfax of Cameron, who was awarded 5,000,000 acres (20,000 km²) of house in northern Virginia by King Charles. The Place that the city now encompasses was fixed in the to the front 18th century by farmers from Virginia’s Tidewater region. The town of “Providence” was established upon the site by an deed of the acknowledge legislature in 1805.