A Weekend in Savannah
Savannah is America's most walkable exercise in urban planning, a city laid out in 1733 by General James Oglethorpe around twenty-two garden squares that function as communal living rooms beneath canopies of live oak and Spanish moss. Unlike Charleston's vertical density, Savannah sprawls horizontally, its gridded streets and open squares creating a rhythm of shade and sunlight that makes walking not just possible but mandatory.
Saturday morning, begin at Forsyth Park and its iconic white fountain, then walk north through the Historic District's squares. Chippewa Square — where the Forrest Gump bench scene was filmed — and Monterey Square, flanked by the Mercer-Williams House of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil fame, are the most photographed, but quieter squares like Crawford and Troup offer equally beautiful architecture without the foot traffic.
Lunch at The Grey, a restaurant housed in a restored 1938 Greyhound bus terminal, represents the pinnacle of Savannah's dining scene. Chef Mashama Bailey, a James Beard Award winner, serves a Southern menu inflected with French technique — port city fried rice, duck confit, and foie gras cornbread — in a soaring Art Deco space. The oyster bar at the front is open without reservations and serves some of the best raw shellfish on the Georgia coast.
The SCAD Museum of Art, operated by the Savannah College of Art and Design, occupies a converted railroad depot and mounts exhibitions that bring contemporary art into a city dominated by historical tourism. SCAD's presence has transformed Savannah's cultural landscape over four decades, filling former warehouses and theaters with studios, galleries, and design shops that give the city a creative energy unusual for its size.
Saturday evening, drinks at Artillery on Bull Street — a bar occupying a former ammunition depot — followed by dinner at Cotton & Rye or The Florence for Italian-influenced Southern cooking. Afterward, walk River Street along the Savannah River bluff, where nineteenth-century cotton warehouses have been converted into shops and restaurants built on the ballast-stone ramps that once connected the port to the city above. Ghost tours depart nightly from various squares for those inclined. Consult https://www.visitsavannah.com for current listings.
Sunday, drive thirty minutes to Wormsloe Historic Site on the Isle of Hope, where a mile-long avenue of four hundred live oaks creates one of the most dramatic tree-lined drives in the American South. The site preserves the tabby ruins of a 1739 colonial estate and offers hiking trails through marsh and maritime forest. Return via Bonaventure Cemetery, the hauntingly beautiful Victorian necropolis on the Wilmington River where Bird Girl once stood.
Savannah's gift is deceleration. The squares, originally designed for military musters, now function as invitations to pause — sit on a bench, watch the light filter through the moss, and let the city's deliberate slowness overwrite whatever urgency you carried in. It is a place where doing nothing in particular is the most productive use of your time.
