Named “the most beautiful city in North America” by the style-arbiting Parisian newspaper Le Monde, Savannah (pop. 130,000) is a real jewel of a place. Founded in 1733 as the first settlement in Georgia, the thirteenth and final American colony, Savannah today preserves its original neoclassical, colonial, and antebellum self in a welcoming, unself-conscious way. Famous for having been spared by General Sherman on his destructive “March to the Sea” at the end of the Civil War, it was here that Sherman made his offering of “40 acres and a mule” to all freed slaves.
Before and after the war, Savannah was Georgia’s main port, rivaling Charleston, South Carolina, for the enormously lucrative cotton trade, but as commercial shipping tailed off, the harbor became increasingly recreational—the yachting competitions of the 1996 Olympics were held offshore. Savannah, home of writer Flannery O’Connor and songsmith Johnny Mercer, also served as backdrop to the best-selling book Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, and for numerous movies, most famously Forrest Gump, but has resisted urges to turn itself into an “Old South” theme park; you’ll have to search hard to find souvenir shops or overpriced knickknack galleries. Mainly, March is when things get crazy here: Thousands of visitors come to the bars along Congress Street for what has grown into the world’s second-largest St. Patrick’s Day celebration—only New York City’s is bigger.
At the center of Savannah, midway down Bull Street between the waterfront and spacious Forsyth Park, Chippewa Square was the site of Forrest Gump’s bus bench (the movie prop was moved to the visitors center and may one day be erected in bronze). Reynolds Square, near the waterfront, has a statue of John Wesley, who lived in Savannah in 1736–1737 and established the world’s first Sunday School here. Wright Square holds a monument to Chief Tomochichi, the Native American tribal leader who allowed Oglethorpe to settle here, and Forsyth Park, at the south edge of the historic center, is modeled after the Place de la Concorde in Paris, surrounded by richly scented magnolias.
Another great place to wander is Factor’s Walk, a promontory along the Savannah River named for the “factors” who controlled Savannah’s cotton trade. This area holds the Cotton Exchange and other historic buildings, many of them constructed from 18th-century ballast stones. Linked from the top of the bluffs by a network of steep stone stairways and cast-iron walkways, River Street is lined by restaurants, and at the east end there’s a statue of a girl waving: This was erected in memory of Florence Martus, who for 50 years around the turn of the 20th century greeted every ship entering Savannah harbor in the vain hope that her boyfriend would be on board.
