BY SAM WORLEY
The oldest city in Georgia, Savannah is a city whose rich history is evident everywhere you look. It’s also evident everywhere you step: The city is still laid out around 22 elegant, tree-filled squares according to a plan developed by James Oglethorpe, who founded the city on a bluff overlooking the Savannah River in 1733. All those squares—and the city’s relatively modest size—mean it is eminently walkable, and many of the best things to do in Savannah involve sites that are within easy strolling distance of one another. But don’t miss the chance to escape the downtown to get a glimpse of the eye-popping natural beauty that surrounds this place. It truly is a jewel.
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Lee Ann Ratledge / Alamy Stock PhotoACTIVITYBonaventure Cemetery
The 100-plus acre Bonaventure Cemetery is one of the loveliest places in Savannah. Tree-lined avenues hanging with Spanish moss lead to the graves of some of the city’s notable residents, including the songwriter Johnny Mercer and the poet Conrad Aiken. But the space is as much garden as graveyard; camellias bloom in December and January, followed by pink and purple azaleas in early spring.
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AlamyACTIVITYFootprints of Savannah Walking Tour
Footprints of Savannah is a one-woman show, with a poet, teacher, museum interpreter, and former broadcast journalist as its star. The aptly named Vaughnette Goode-Walker has, for more than a decade, been offering this historical walking tour of downtown Savannah. Tours are an intimate, homespun affair: Give Goode-Walker a call a couple days beforehand and she’ll schedule you in. With storytelling at its center, the tour comes with few bells and whistles; it’s simply a two-hour, unhurried stroll through old lanes and squares.
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Nikreates / Alamy Stock PhotoACTIVITYSCAD Museum of Art
The United States’ oldest surviving railroad depot is the setting for one of Savannah’s newest art museums: the SCAD Museum of Art, which wrapped its major expansion in 2011. You might think that trying to put a modern spin on an 1853 antebellum building could go quite badly, but the end result is lovely. The long, low building features restored Savannah gray brick, a towering glass atrium, and some glassy exterior touches. There’s a lot going on inside, too. Exhibits come from the likes of Kehinde Wiley, Nick Cave, and Ebony G. Patterson.
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Courtesy The Book Lady BookstoreSHOPThe Book Lady Bookstore
The Book Lady is one of those jumbled, quaint, old bookstores that you see sometimes in movies but not as often in real life. A couple steps down from the Liberty Street sidewalk, the shop sells a mix of new and used titles and rare editions, with a fabulous selection of books of local and regional interest. You’ll find big-name titles (Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil) as well as terrific books on Southern history, cooking, and culture. And, as one of two superlative bookstores in downtown (the other is E. Shaver), it also tends to attract authors making their rounds in the South. You may be lucky enough to be in town for a reading.
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AlamyACTIVITYMoon River Kayak Tours
Waving seas of grass and the tidal creeks that feed them are beautiful to take in if you’re driving across a causeway, but even lovelier at eye level; say, from a kayak. Moon River Kayak Tours offers daily launches from Rodney J. Hall Boat Ramp, a peaceful site about 20 minutes out of town. The tours are exceptionally well-situated, with a state park in one direction and a historic preserve in the other. They provide kayaks, paddles, life jackets, and someone to show you where to go.
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Courtesy Pin Point Heritage MuseumACTIVITY
Pin Point Heritage Museum
Pin Point Heritage Museum tells the remarkable story of the small African American fishing village that was established in the 1890s by people who had been enslaved on the nearby Sea Islands. Made up of four restored buildings, this small museum is located in the former A.S. Varn & Son Oyster and Crab Factory, and affords breathtaking views of the salt marshes along the snaking Moon River. About 300 people still live in the community, which hosts a big seafood festival every fall. The museum is far enough out that it doesn’t draw the big crowds, which is just as well: All the better to hear the breezes over the marsh.
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Courtesy Two Tides Brewing Co.BARTwo Tides Brewing Co.
$$Owned by a husband-and-wife team, this funky local favorite is on the second floor of a 100-year-old house, a fact not easily forgotten once you’ve climbed the outdoor stairs and entered the space. Take your pick of rooms; sit out front in the light, cheerful taproom, or enjoy the view of 41st Street from the balcony. Anchored by a few stalwarts, the beer menu changes constantly with seasonal or specialty offerings, though the brewery specializes in “haze and funk,” which manifest themselves in various IPAs and sours. For all its reputed nighttime revelry, Savannah comes up comparatively short when it comes to chill neighborhood bars where it’s possible to sit, escape the crush, and grab a drink with friends. Two Tides fills that gap.
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AlamySHOPAlex Raskin Antiques
Alex Raskin Antiques registers to the eye less as any kind of commercial establishment, and more as an ancient relic that nobody has ventured into in decades. Don’t believe your eyes, though: This four-story Italianate building, which looms over Monterey Square and has been referred to as the “last unrestored grand mansion of Savannah,” is packed to the gills with treasures from 19th, even the 18th, centuries. The space is very much on the tourist circuit, though—something to keep in mind if you’re uncomfortable in crowds.
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AlamyRESTAURANTLeopold’s Ice Cream
If it’s warm out—and it usually is—the first thing you’ll notice about Leopold’s is the line, which snakes out the front door and usually halfway down the block. Some old-fashioned ice cream parlors get by on good looks and perfectly mediocre ice cream, but not this Savannah institution. It’s got good looks, sure, but also truly excellent ice cream. Leopold’s turned 100 years old in 2019, and tourists have been coming here almost that long—and they’re not likely to stop anytime soon.
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Courtesy Graveface RecordsSHOP
Graveface Records & Curiosities
Graveface Records & Curiosities is a kind of cultural touchstone for another slice of life in Savannah—a younger counterculture that finds the tourist-clogged historic district less appealing. The space is long and pleasingly cluttered with crates of records and assorted curios; the taxidermied heads of a couple big ungulates hang high on the wall. The shop also hosts shows—check out the schedule online. And be sure to pick up a Graveface T-shirt. The skeleton logo will make for a macabre memento of your time in Savannah.
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Richard Ellis / Alamy Stock PhotoACTIVITYWormsloe State Historic Site
Its most famous feature is the 1.5-mile-long allée lined by 400-some live oak trees, but there’s a lot more to Wormsloe State Historic Site, including the oldest standing structure in Georgia—the tabby ruins of the estate of Noble Jones, one of the colony’s early English settlers, who started laying this property out in the 1730s—and miles of beautiful hiking trails that wend their way through maritime forest and salt marsh. That’s the beauty of it: Everyone clamors for photos under the oaks, so you may find yourself hiking in solitude.
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BuyenlargeACTIVITYOwens-Thomas House & Slave Quarters
Savannah has a number of grand old mansions representing a variety of architectural traditions, all facing one or another of the city’s beautiful squares, and all formerly owned by families of the wealthy planter elite. The Owens-Thomas is all of those things, yes. But it’s more in an important way: Recently Telfair Museums, which owns and operates the building, reimagined its programming to emphasize the stories of the enslaved people at this house when it was home to the family of former Savannah mayor George Welshman Owens.
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robertharding / Alamy Stock PhotoACTIVITYForsyth Park
Savannah’s perfect little green space, Forsyth Park marks the boundary between the downtown historic district and the rest of the city. On the north side of the park, the elegant Forsyth fountain is more than 150 years old, and the image you’re most apt to see on a brochure boasting of Savannah’s beauty; on the south side, the Forsyth Farmers’ Market takes over every Saturday, year round, from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. There’s a playground for kids and a bandshell that’s home to the Savannah Jazz Festival. The tree-shaded north end is also the loveliest place to have a picnic, or just loll around for a while.
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Vespasian / Alamy Stock PhotoACTIVITYFlannery O’Connor Childhood Home
Savannah’s favorite daughter, the great American writer Flannery O’Connor, was born in Savannah in 1925, and spent her childhood in a charming row house facing Lafayette Square. The eccentric spirit of O’Connor and her work infuses the museum today, which is just about as weird as you’d expect. It’s also as fun as a restored Depression-era writer’s home could possibly be. They keep a robust schedule of activities like a regular free lecture series, an annual holiday reading of Truman Capote’s short story “A Christmas Memory,” and—best of all—a celebration of O’Connor’s birthday, which features a parade and street fair out front in Lafayette Square.
