Savannah

Top things to do in Savannah

1. 01

   Savannah's squares - walk Oglethorpe's grid end to end

   history culture arts 👍 Popular

   The squares are the city, and the way to understand them is to walk a north-south line and take them in turn. Johnson Square was the first, laid out in 1733 with Nathanael Greene buried under its monument. Wright Square has a boulder marking the grave of Tomochichi, the Yamacraw chief who let the colonists land. Chippewa Square holds the Oglethorpe statue and the spot where the Forrest Gump bench was set up for filming. Monterey Square is the most photographed, with the Pulaski monument, a Gothic revival synagogue on one side and the Mercer-Williams House on the other. Lafayette, Reynolds, Madison and Telfair Squares each have their own set piece.

2. 02

   Forsyth Park - the fountain at the bottom of the grid

   scenic history 👍 Popular

   Thirty acres of oaks and open lawn closing off the south end of the historic district, with a white cast-iron fountain from the 1850s at the head of the main allee that is the single most photographed object in the city. Beyond it are tennis courts, a playground, the old armoury building and a fragrant garden originally laid out for blind visitors, and the lawns fill on weekends with a farmers market, dog walkers and pick-up sport. The blocks facing the park hold the grandest of the Victorian houses.

3. 03

   River Street and Factors Walk - ballast stone under the cotton warehouses

   history scenic 👍 Popular

   The bluff drops sharply from Bay Street to the river, and the drop is filled with old cotton warehouses, iron catwalks and ramps paved in ballast stones that ships dumped here on arrival. Up top is Factors Walk, where cotton was graded and prices were set for a good part of the world; down below is a solid run of bars, sweet shops pulling pralines in the window and souvenir trade, plus the Waving Girl statue commemorating a keeper's sister who greeted every ship for decades. The reason to come is the river itself: container ships the size of city blocks slide past within a stone's throw on their way to one of the busiest ports in the country. The stone ramps turn ankles, so use the stairs in poor shoes.

4. 04

   Bonaventure Cemetery - live oaks, Spanish moss and the writers' graves

   history scenic ⭐ Highly recommended

   A former plantation on a bluff over the Wilmington River, laid out as a burial ground in the 1840s and now the image most people carry away from Savannah: avenues of enormous live oaks, moss to the ground, Victorian statuary and azaleas. Johnny Mercer is buried here, and Conrad Aiken's grave is a granite bench you are meant to sit on, inscribed for a passing cosmos mariner. The Bird Girl statue that made the cemetery famous on a book jacket was moved into a museum downtown years ago, so do not go looking for her. Ten to fifteen minutes east of downtown by car.

5. 05

   Owens-Thomas House and Slave Quarters - a Regency mansion told from the back building

   history culture arts ⭐ Highly recommended

   An English architect's 1819 showpiece on Oglethorpe Square, with a cast-iron balcony Lafayette spoke from, an indoor plumbing system that predates the White House's and a bridge crossing the stairwell. What makes it the best house museum in town is that the tour is built around the carriage house behind it, one of the earliest intact urban slave quarters in the South, with its original haint-blue ceiling paint still on the boards, and the guiding treats the household's enslaved people as the subject rather than a footnote.

6. 06

   Wormsloe Historic Site - the oak avenue and the tabby ruin

   history scenic

   About twenty minutes south-east on the Isle of Hope, and the drive is the attraction: a mile and a half of arrow-straight sand road under some four hundred live oaks planted in rows, which is the shot every visitor comes for. At the end are the tabby ruins of Noble Jones's fortified house, built of lime, sand and oyster shell in the 1730s and the oldest standing structure in Savannah, plus a small museum, a colonial-life demonstration area and marsh trails out to the river.

7. 07

   First African Baptist Church - one of the oldest Black congregations in North America

   history culture arts

   The congregation traces to the 1770s and the brick sanctuary on Franklin Square was raised in 1859 by its own members, many of them enslaved, working at night after their owners' work was done. The pews upstairs carry marks made by the builders, the stained glass is original, and there is a diamond pattern of holes drilled through the sanctuary floor that the church explains as air holes for people sheltering in the crawl space beneath on their way north. Ask about the tour rather than just looking in.

8. 08

   Cathedral Basilica of St. John the Baptist - the twin spires over Lafayette Square

   culture arts history

   The white French Gothic cathedral is the tallest thing in the old city and the interior is a genuine surprise after the plain Protestant churches elsewhere on the grid: blue and gold vaulting, Bavarian stained glass and a set of murals above the altar. The square outside is one of the prettiest, with Flannery O'Connor's childhood home on one corner and the Andrew Low House and a fountain under the oaks in between.

9. 09

   Telfair Academy, the Jepson Center and the SCAD Museum of Art

   culture arts history

   Three museums within a few blocks that cover the city's whole arc. The Telfair is a Regency mansion turned gallery in the 1880s, one of the oldest public art museums in the South, and it now houses the Bird Girl statue from the Bonaventure photograph. The Jepson Center across the square is a white stone-and-glass building by Moshe Safdie holding the contemporary collection. The SCAD Museum of Art occupies the brick shell of an 1850s railway depot and shows contemporary work and a strong costume and textile collection, and the art school behind it is the reason so many derelict buildings around town got roofs back on.

10. 10

    Lowcountry cooking - shrimp and grits, oysters and Savannah red rice

    food

    The regional dishes are the ones to order: shrimp and grits, a Lowcountry boil tipped onto the table, roasted oysters from the creeks in the cold months, Savannah red rice, okra soup, fried chicken, benne wafers and pralines. Mrs Wilkes' Dining Room on Jones Street serves a Southern lunch at communal tables to whoever is prepared to stand in line for it, The Grey occupies a restored 1938 bus terminal and cooks the region seriously, the Olde Pink House does the grand-old-mansion version on Reynolds Square, and Leopold's has been scooping ice cream in this town since 1919. Broughton Street and the blocks around the Starland District carry most of the newer kitchens.

11. 11

    Colonial Park Cemetery and the ghost-tour circuit

    history

    The downtown burial ground took the city's dead from 1750 until 1853, including the yellow fever victims of 1820 in a mass grave, and Union troops camped in it during the occupation and reportedly amused themselves altering the dates on headstones, some of which are now propped against the east wall. It anchors the ghost-tour trade, which is enormous here and runs from serious social history in walking shoes to a hearse full of people howling; the good ones use the fever epidemics, the fires and the burials to tell you what actually happened to this city.

12. 12

    Georgia State Railroad Museum - the antebellum roundhouse and turntable

    history

    The Central of Georgia Railway's repair shops on the western edge of downtown are the most complete antebellum railway complex left standing anywhere, with a working turntable, a roundhouse of stalls, a tall brick smokestack and rolling stock you can climb over. Short train rides run on the site, and the old passenger shed next door holds the city history museum on the ground where the 1779 siege was fought.

13. 13

    Broughton Street and City Market - shopping, ice cream and the evening crowd

    shopping nightlife music

    Broughton is the old main street, a run of restored storefronts holding boutiques, the art school's own shops, bookshops and the ice cream queue. City Market, four blocks of low sheds and courtyards beside Ellis Square, is where the bars, buskers and horse carriages concentrate at night - unashamedly touristy, but the courtyard has working artist studios upstairs and it is where the district's evening actually happens.

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