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Savannah lets you walk out of a bar with a drink. It is also specific about how. Under the city code, a licensed bar or restaurant downtown can sell you one drink per person to go, in a paper or plastic cup, no larger than sixteen ounces. No cans, no bottles, no glass, and nothing open on the street bigger than sixteen ounces.

The rule covers the old core: from the river south to Jones Street, between the Talmadge Bridge on the west and the far side of Savannah River Landing on the east. The city has weighed stretching that line further south, so check its current map before you wander toward Forsyth Park with a cup in hand. The same rules hold on St. Patrick’s Day, when the whole town tests them at once.

T H E  S Q U A R E S

Oglethorpe’s plan is the rare piece of colonial design that still does its job every day. Each ward was built around an open square with lots for public buildings on its flanks, so the city grew as a chain of small parks rather than along a single main street. Visit Savannah counts twenty-two of the original twenty-four still standing. The district was named a National Historic Landmark in 1966, and it is why the cars go around and the people go through.

Forsyth Park is where the grid opens up. It began in the 1840s as ten acres and now runs to thirty, anchored by a fountain installed in 1858 and restored in 2025.

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The avenue at Wormsloe, a mile of live oaks from the gate.

Wormsloe is the drive. The state historic site at 7601 Skidaway Road opens with what Georgia State Parks calls a mile-long avenue of live oaks, and it is exactly as good as the photographs. Adults are $12. It is open every day from 9 to 4:45, except Thanksgiving and Christmas. Go early, before the light goes flat.

Bonaventure is the quiet one. Private from 1846 and run by the city since 1907, the cemetery covers more than a hundred acres of oaks, moss and marble at 330 Bonaventure Road, open daily from 8 to 5. The Bonaventure Historical Society offers tours at no charge on the weekend of the second Sunday each month. Walk it slowly and keep your voice down. It is still a working cemetery.

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The riverfront at dusk, City Hall’s gold dome behind. Photo: Tyler Edic / Unsplash.

The money was made at the water. River Street runs along the Savannah River below the bluff, and the cotton factors worked in the buildings stacked above it along Factors Walk. The Savannah Cotton Exchange, finished in 1887 to a design by the Boston architect William Gibbons Preston, stands over the public slip down to the river, and both the city and the state had to sign off before it could be built in the air above it. The city’s own survey calls it an early example of air rights.

The power plant is the new part. At the west end of River Street, the city’s 1912 power station went dark in 2005, and the Kessler Collection reopened it in 2020 as Plant Riverside District: the JW Marriott, rooftop bars and more than a dozen restaurants under the old 176-foot smokestacks. Walk through the hotel even if you are not staying. The lobby is lined with giant geodes and glass cases of minerals, and a chrome dinosaur hangs overhead.

Brigitte, meeting one of the geodes inside the JW Marriott.

The old stretch of River Street is the loudest few blocks in town and worth exactly one walk at dusk. Do the walk, then climb back up to the squares for dinner.

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A carriage past the Cathedral of St. John the Baptist. Photo: Diane Picchiottino / Unsplash.

FRIDAY

11:30 AM · Lunch at Mrs. Wilkes’ Dining Room, 107 West Jones Street. Family-style since 1943 at shared tables of ten, Monday to Friday, 11 to 2, cash or check only.
2:00 PM · Walk the squares. Start at Chippewa and work north on Bull Street toward City Hall and the river, then drift east and west. There is no wrong turn in a grid of parks.
5:30 PM · Down to River Street and Factors Walk as the light drops, past the Cotton Exchange, and west to Plant Riverside.
7:30 PM · Dinner at The Olde Pink House, 23 Abercorn Street, in a mansion built in 1771. Reserve ahead.

Friday night, walking home through the squares.

SATURDAY

9:00 AM · The Forsyth Farmers’ Market, then breakfast at The Collins Quarter, 151 Bull Street, which serves brunch daily from 8.
11:30 AM · Out Skidaway Road to Wormsloe. Give it an hour and a half.
2:30 PM · Telfair Museums. One $30 adult ticket covers the Telfair Academy, which calls itself the oldest public art museum in the South, plus the Jepson Center and the Owens-Thomas House and Slave Quarters, and it is good for seven days. Closed Mondays.
5:00 PM · Leopold’s Ice Cream, 212 East Broughton Street, scooping since 1919.
7:30 PM · Dinner at The Grey, 109 Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard. Reserve well ahead.

SUNDAY

8:30 AM · Bonaventure Cemetery. The gates open at 8. Give it an hour, slowly.
10:30 AM · Brunch at Husk Savannah, 12 West Oglethorpe Avenue, weekends 10 to 2.
12:30 PM · Tybee, twenty to thirty minutes east. Climb the lighthouse, 178 steps, $14 for adults, open 9 to 4:30 and closed Tuesdays. Then go find the water.
On the way out · Take US 80 back across the marsh with the windows down. It is the correct last look at the coast, and it costs nothing.

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The Grey, 109 Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard. A 1938 art deco Greyhound terminal turned dining room. Mashama Bailey, chef and partner, won the James Beard Foundation’s Best Chef Southeast in 2019 and its national Outstanding Chef award in 2022, and TIME named her to its 100 most influential people in 2026. She has since taken the Grey to Paris, with L’Arret by the Grey. Dinner Tuesday through Saturday, brunch and dinner on Sunday.

Mrs. Wilkes’ Dining Room, 107 West Jones Street. Family-style lunch since 1943 at tables for ten. Weekdays only, cash or check, ATM on site.

The Olde Pink House, 23 Abercorn Street. Dinner every night in a mansion built in 1771, lunch Tuesday through Saturday.

Husk Savannah, 12 West Oglethorpe Avenue. Dinner nightly, brunch on weekends.

The Wyld Dock Bar, 2740 Livingston Avenue. The casual one, south of downtown. No reservations and no cash.

Book the dinners before you leave home. The squares are walkable; the good tables are not walk-ins.

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The famous bench was a prop. The Forrest Gump bench scene was shot on the north side of Chippewa Square, with Oglethorpe’s statue behind, on a bench the production brought with it and then took away. So do not go hunting the square for it. A Forrest Gump bench is on display at the Savannah History Museum, 303 Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard.

St. Patrick’s Day closes things as well as opening them. The parade committee traces the march back to 1824, and on parade day Telfair, Mrs. Wilkes’ and the Tybee lighthouse all close. Come for it on purpose or not at all.

The airport is the country’s favorite, and it is close. Condé Nast Traveler readers have voted Savannah/Hilton Head International the best airport in the United States six years running, through 2025. It handled 4.2 million passengers that year and sits about ten miles from the historic district. Land Friday at noon and you can make Mrs. Wilkes’ before it closes at two.

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A few things, in the order they will cost you something. The to-go cup is legal downtown, one drink at a time, sixteen ounces, never glass; step outside the zone and it is not. Mrs. Wilkes’ is weekday lunch only, cash or check. Telfair is closed Mondays and the Tybee lighthouse Tuesdays. And the dinners worth driving for book ahead, so reserve before you leave.

One more, about timing. Spring and fall are the kind seasons here. Midsummer is hot and heavy under the oaks, and St. Patrick’s week fills the city on purpose, so pick your weekend with both in mind.

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Savannah is half of a question we hear all the time: this, or Charleston? Southern Living’s readers have an answer. In the magazine’s 2026 South’s Best vote, Charleston took the top city spot for the tenth year running and Savannah came second.

Ask my friend and Christie’s colleague in Savannah, Staci Donegan, and she will tell you the readers got the order wrong. Ask me, and, well, I am a little biased.

The Split No. 03 in The Southern Ledger puts them head to head: seven categories, a verdict in each, no ties. Our Charleston weekend is in the archive too.

THE HOME THAT FITS THE WEEKEND

What $4 Million Can Buy You in Savannah

We do not sell houses in Georgia. Staci does, and she walked me through one of her historic downtown houses on camera: a stucco townhouse behind a curved parapet gable with a palmetto on either side of the gate, a glass wall opening onto a courtyard of palms, and a rooftop terrace tucked between the neighbors’ walls.

SOUTHERN ESCAPES | HOME TOURS · SAVANNAH, WITH STACI DONEGAN

Watch the full tour on Southern Escapes

Staci, mid-tour, at the glass wall onto the courtyard.

Staci Donegan is an associate broker with Seabolt Real Estate | Christie’s International Real Estate, one of the strongest luxury agents in Savannah, and she works inside the same Christie’s network we do. If it is Savannah itself you want, reply to this letter and I will make the introduction.

If it is the oaks and the marsh without the state line, Old Town Bluffton is about forty minutes from these squares and Hilton Head Island about an hour, both across the river in South Carolina, both in the Lowcountry markets our team covers. Same oaks, same marsh, same airport. Our May River weekend covers Bluffton.

The Palmetto Bluff field guide carries the score, what to weigh, and a weekend of its own.

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Every Weekend Escape is built to be forwarded. Send this one to the friend who keeps saying they will finally see Savannah, the couple still arguing Savannah against Charleston, or the one about to walk out of a bar with a glass in hand.

If a friend sent you this one, welcome. The Escape lands every Saturday.

The intelligence layer between where you are and where you belong.