🇺🇸 United States · The South / Southeast
Savannah is one of the most charming and atmospheric cities in the American South. Founded in 1733 as the first town of the colony of Georgia, it keeps a unique historic district laid out around a grid of landscaped squares shaded by centuries-old oaks draped in Spanish moss. Walking through Savannah means sinking into a South of mansions, churches, fountains, antebellum houses and a romantic, slightly melancholy air that has inspired writers and filmmakers.
Its Historic District, one of the largest in the United States, is an open-air museum of colonial, Georgian and Victorian architecture, dotted with 22 historic squares that invite you to wander with no fixed route. Beside the Savannah River, the old port frontage of River Street —cobblestones and converted cotton warehouses— is packed with restaurants, shops and life. And a short distance away are the beaches of Tybee Island, on the Atlantic.
This guide covers the essentials of Savannah with a practical eye: the maze of squares in the historic district, the unmissable spots like Forsyth Park and River Street, the rich southern low country cooking, the trips to the coast and the historic cemeteries, and how to get around. Whether for its history, its architecture or its unique atmosphere, Savannah is one of those cities that stay with you.
Savannah was founded in 1733 by the British general James Oglethorpe as the first town of the colony of Georgia, with an innovative city plan of squares that survives to this day. It prospered as a port, above all with cotton, in an economy marked by slavery. During the Civil War, General Sherman took it in 1864 and, instead of burning it, 'gifted' it to President Lincoln as a Christmas present, which saved its heritage. In the 20th century a citizens' preservation movement rescued the historic district. The full history is on our history page.
Read the full history ↓The 'peach state': last of the thirteen colonies, Cherokee and Creek land laid waste by Sherman's march, starting point of the Trail of Tears, birthplace of Martin Luther King and of Atlanta's rise as the capital of the New South.
Read the history of Georgia →No exact prices: a scale from $ (budget) to $$$$$ (luxury), with 2-3 options per category.
Origins, formation and what the sources say.
In December 1864, a general who had just laid Georgia to waste by fire and sword arrived at the gates of Savannah and, instead of burning it, 'gifted' it by telegram to President Lincoln as a Christmas present. That unusual gesture saved one of the most beautiful cities in the United States from the flames and explains why today, more than a century and a half later, Savannah still stands with its squares, its oaks and its mansions almost intact. But to understand how that city came to exist you have to go much further back, to a landing in 1733.
Savannah was born on 12 February 1733, when the British general and philanthropist James Oglethorpe landed on top of a bluff beside the Savannah River with a group of colonists and founded there the first settlement of the new colony of Georgia, the thirteenth and last of the British colonies in what would become the United States. Georgia was conceived with a singular purpose: to give a new chance to the poor and to debtors from England, and to serve as a defensive barrier between the prosperous Carolinas and Spanish Florida.
The most enduring part of Oglethorpe's project was his city plan. He laid Savannah out on an innovative grid, organized around 'wards', each with a central landscaped square surrounded by lots for houses and public buildings. This orderly, human layout, with its squares as community spaces, was replicated as the city grew, and survives today as one of the best-preserved examples of colonial town planning in the world: of the 24 original squares, 22 still remain.
In its early years the colony had unusual rules: rum and slavery were banned. Those bans did not last, however: economic pressure from the plantations led to slavery being legalized in the middle of the 18th century, which would deeply mark the social and economic history of Savannah and of all Georgia over the following century.
Before Oglethorpe arrived, the bluff where Savannah was founded was the territory of the Yamacraw, a small Indigenous group of the Muscogee (Creek) language family that had settled in the area a few years earlier, partly separated from the more numerous Creek bands of the interior. Their leader, the mico (chief) Tomochichi, played a decisive role in the birth of the city: rather than resist the newcomers, he chose to make an alliance with Oglethorpe.
Tomochichi allowed the colonists to settle on the bluff and acted as intermediary and ally during the colony's critical first years, easing contact with the wider Creek nations and helping to keep a relatively stable peace in a region disputed by the British, the Spanish and the French. In 1734 he even traveled to England with Oglethorpe, where he was received by the royal court as an allied chief, a famous episode in the chronicles of the time.
That initial alliance, however, did not prevent the fate suffered by almost every native people of the southeast of North America: in the following decades, the spread of the plantations and colonial pressure gradually displaced the Muscogee and other nations from their ancestral lands, a process that would culminate, in the 19th century, in the forced removals to the west. Today Savannah remembers Tomochichi with a monument in Wright Square, near the place where, by tradition, he was buried.
Over the course of the 19th century, Savannah became one of the great ports of the American South, thanks above all to the cotton trade. The fertility of the region and the invention of the cotton gin —which, by tradition, Eli Whitney conceived on a plantation near Savannah in 1793— sent production of the fiber soaring, and it was exported to the world from its docks. The old cotton warehouses on the riverbank, now turned into the restaurants and shops of River Street, bear witness to that prosperity.
That wealth, however, rested on enslaved labor on the cotton and rice plantations of the region, in a system that defined southern society. Savannah became one of the ports through which the trade in enslaved people passed. The elegant mansions of the historic district that tourists admire today were largely built on that economy.
During the Civil War (1861-1865), Savannah was a strategic target. In December 1864 the Union general William T. Sherman ended there his devastating 'March to the Sea', which had laid Georgia waste. Unlike other cities burned during his advance, Sherman entered Savannah without destroying it and, in a famous telegram, offered it to President Abraham Lincoln as a 'Christmas gift'. That decision saved the city's extraordinary architectural heritage from the flames, and it has reached our day almost intact.
After the Civil War and the abolition of slavery, Savannah went through a long period of relative economic stagnation which, paradoxically, helped preserve its heritage: with less pressure to rebuild and modernize, much of the historic city stayed standing, if run down. In the middle of the 20th century, however, several emblematic mansions and buildings were demolished, which alarmed the public.
The response was one of the most influential historic preservation movements in the country. In 1955, faced with the imminent demolition of the historic market, a group of women founded the Historic Savannah Foundation, which began buying, saving and restoring threatened buildings. Thanks to that pioneering effort, Savannah's historic district was preserved and, in 1966, was designated a National Historic Landmark District, one of the largest in the United States. The founding of the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD) in 1978 added new momentum, restoring numerous historic buildings for academic use.
Today Savannah combines its historic legacy with a vibrant cultural and culinary life. Its unique atmosphere —the squares, the oaks and the Spanish moss, the mansions, the cemeteries— has made it the setting for novels and films (such as 'Forrest Gump' or 'Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil') and one of the most popular and romantic tourist destinations in the South. The city also keeps alive its African American heritage and the Gullah/Geechee culture of the coast, an essential part of its identity.