Savannah

The big park below the historic grid is known by its white cast-iron fountain of 1858. Every Saturday morning a farmers market fills the south end, and people lounge on the lawns beneath the oaks. On St Patrick's Day the fountain water is dyed green.

Small squares set into the grid at regular intervals let you walk the old town square by square. Cars must loop around each one, which slows traffic by itself. Chippewa Square is where Forrest Gump sat on his bench, though the prop bench now lives in a museum.

Old cotton warehouses below the river bluff now hold bars and shops, and the cobbles are said to be ballast stones that ships carried for weight. The stairs down from the street above are steep and slick, so hold the rail. Giant cargo ships glide close by.

Graves and marble statues line moss-hung oak avenues on what was once a riverside plantation. The Bird Girl statue from the cover of a 1990s novel drew such crowds that it went to a museum. The gates close at a fixed hour, so hurry in late afternoon.

An avenue of live oaks running more than 2km from the gate is the famous view. At its end stand the crumbling walls of a house a 1730s settler built of tabby, a concrete made with oyster shell. The avenue is seen from the car, driven slowly.

A French Gothic cathedral with twin spires facing Lafayette Square. A fire in 1898 left only the walls, and the rebuilding gave it today's stained glass and murals. Sightseeing stops during Mass.

A red-brick mansion on Monterey Square; a 1981 shooting inside became the basis of the novel Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. The songwriter Johnny Mercer's great-grandfather began it, but Mercer never lived here. Tours show the ground floor only.

Built of tens of millions of bricks and thought unbreachable, the fort fell in 1862 after little more than a day under Union rifled cannon. Shells from that bombardment are still lodged in its walls. The fort lies midway on the road out to Tybee Island.

A beach island half an hour out to the east, with a lighthouse first raised in the 18th century at its north end. Today's tower was rebuilt after the Civil War, and 178 steps climb to the top. Fences keep people off the dunes.

A Regency mansion of 1819 that had indoor plumbing unusually early for America. Above the carriage house out back the rooms where enslaved people lived survive, their ceilings still painted haint blue.

The birthplace of Juliette Gordon Low, who founded the Girl Scouts here in 1912, now a museum run by the Girl Scouts. Troops in uniform arrive from across the country, so it is busy even on weekdays. Check the official site for tour times before you go.

An 1819 Neoclassical mansion, opened as a museum in 1886, the South's oldest public art museum. Red-walled galleries are crowded with 19th-century American and European paintings. Combined admission adds the nearby contemporary wing and the Owens-Thomas House.

Used for over 100 years from the 1750s, this downtown graveyard holds Button Gwinnett, a Declaration of Independence signer. Civil War Union troops camped among the graves reputedly altered headstone dates; some show it. Ghost tours gather at night.

Among North America's oldest Black congregations; members built the 1859 church, hauling bricks at night after work. Patterned holes in the floor are said to have let air reach freedom seekers hidden below. Museum tours show the gallery and lower level.

About 5km east of downtown on the river, a brick fort begun in 1808, the oldest standing brick fort in Georgia. Costumed interpreters fire the cannon in demonstrations that boom across the water. Huge container ships glide right past the walls.