Best Things to Do in Georgia (USA) (2026 Guide)

Savannah’s Historic District is one of the largest urban National Historic Landmark districts in the United States, covering more than two square miles of antebellum architecture, live oak canopy, and the grid of 22 public squares laid out by founder James Oglethorpe in 1733. Walking through it, the original city plan still reads clearly — squares alternating with residential and commercial blocks in a pattern that has never been fully disrupted, making Savannah an unusually intact example of 18th-century town planning on American soil.

The district contains hundreds of significant buildings — Federal, Regency, Greek Revival, and Victorian styles layered over two and a half centuries — along with museums, historic house tours, churches, and monuments that make meaningful exploration possible for days. The squares themselves function as outdoor rooms, each with its own monuments, benches, and tree cover, providing natural rest points as visitors move through the city on foot.

The Historic District is walkable year-round, though spring and fall offer the most agreeable conditions. Summer humidity and heat can be oppressive by midday, making early morning or late afternoon walks far more comfortable. Guided walking and carriage tours concentrate on this area and provide historical context that significantly deepens the experience. Most major sites cluster within a manageable radius, and a full day on foot covers the core of the district without feeling rushed.

What makes Savannah’s Historic District singular among Southern cities is the combination of scale, continuity, and human proportion. Unlike cities where historic preservation happened block by block, Savannah preserved the entire framework — the squares, the streets, the setbacks — so the district functions as a coherent environment rather than a collection of isolated landmarks. That integrity is what draws architects, historians, and travelers from around the world.

The house on Crescent Avenue in Midtown where Margaret Mitchell wrote most of Gone with the Wind occupied a single apartment she called “The Dump,” a cramped space where she reportedly stored her manuscript under towels and in boxes for years before reluctantly sharing it with a publisher in 1936. That novel went on to become one of the best-selling works of fiction in history, and the house where it was written now operates as a museum and research center dedicated to Mitchell’s life and the cultural legacy of her work.

The Margaret Mitchell House preserves the ground-floor apartment Mitchell and her husband occupied during the late 1920s and early 1930s, restored to its period appearance with period furniture and artifacts from her life. Museum galleries on the upper floors present exhibits on Mitchell’s biography, the publication history of the novel, and the 1939 film adaptation that brought the story to an even wider audience. A research library holds archival materials related to Mitchell and to Atlanta’s history during the early twentieth century. The surrounding Tudor Revival building, originally constructed as apartments in 1899, has been integrated into the historic site complex.

The museum is open daily except major holidays, and admission includes access to the apartment tour and the permanent exhibits. Tours of the apartment run at regular intervals and have limited group sizes, so arriving shortly before a tour time prevents waiting. The surrounding Midtown neighborhood is walkable, with the High Museum of Art and Piedmont Park within reasonable distance on foot.

In a city that periodically debates its relationship with the Old South mythology Mitchell’s novel helped shape, the Margaret Mitchell House occupies an inherently complicated cultural position. It functions as literary history, local biography, and an ongoing site of reflection about how Atlanta tells its own story.

Forsyth Park unfolds over 30 acres in the heart of Savannah’s Victorian District, its centerpiece a cast-iron fountain that has anchored the southern end of the main promenade since 1858. Spanish moss drapes from live oaks along the central walkway, filtering afternoon light into shifting patterns across the ground below. On any given morning, joggers circle the perimeter, dog walkers cut across the grass, and people with coffee cups occupy the benches nearest the fountain — all of it adding up to a picture of the city living its daily life in public.

The park holds a bandstand, a fragrant garden, a small café, and a playground, along with a large open lawn that hosts weekend farmers markets and seasonal festivals. Confederate and Civil War memorials occupy the northern end of the park, providing historical context that invites reflection alongside the recreational use. The fountain is particularly striking at dusk when nearby lights illuminate the spray.

Forsyth Park is at its best in spring when azaleas bloom along the edges, and in fall when temperatures drop and the park becomes a gathering place for outdoor activity. Summer heat drives many visitors to early morning or evening visits. The Saturday farmers market draws large local crowds and is worth timing a visit around. The park has no admission charge and is accessible at all hours.

Among Savannah’s 22 historic squares, Forsyth is the largest and most park-like in character, functioning more as a green commons than an intimate garden plaza. It serves as the social anchor for the southern end of the Historic District and the adjacent Victorian District, drawing both tourists and longtime residents who use it as a genuine neighborhood park. For visitors wanting to understand how Savannah uses its green spaces, Forsyth provides the clearest example.

A mass of exposed granite rising more than eight hundred feet above the surrounding piedmont, Stone Mountain has defined the eastern horizon of Atlanta for as long as the city has existed. The largest exposed piece of granite in the world draws visitors to a state park that wraps around its base with lakes, trails, and recreational facilities, while the summit offers panoramic views stretching to the downtown skyline on clear days.

The park offers multiple ways to reach the summit, including a cable car, a walking trail that climbs the exposed rock face, and a sky lift with enclosed gondolas. The mountain’s north face is carved with a colossal Confederate memorial relief sculpture, a carving that has generated increasing public debate about its presence in a contemporary context. Beyond the summit, the park contains a lake with beach access, miniature golf, a restored antebellum plantation complex used for historical programming, and extensive wooded trails connecting different sections of the grounds.

Stone Mountain Park operates year-round and charges a separate parking fee for vehicles entering the grounds. Summer evenings bring a laser light show projected onto the mountain’s carved face, which draws large crowds on weekends. Spring and fall offer the most pleasant conditions for hiking the summit trail, with lower temperatures and good visibility. The summit trail takes roughly forty-five minutes to an hour depending on fitness level and the pace of ascent.

Just sixteen miles east of downtown Atlanta, Stone Mountain stands as the region’s most geologically distinctive landmark. Its scale and the rawness of the exposed granite face give it a presence that has no equivalent elsewhere in the Georgia piedmont, regardless of the complications surrounding the memorial carved into its side.

In the heat of a Georgia summer, the rose garden and canopy walk of the Atlanta Botanical Garden provide a rare combination of sensory abundance and genuine botanical rigor in the middle of a dense urban neighborhood. The garden shares its northern boundary with Piedmont Park in Midtown, occupying thirty acres of cultivated landscape that includes specialized collections ranging from orchids and carnivorous plants to tropical and desert species housed in a dedicated conservatory building.

The Fuqua Conservatory presents tropical ecosystems and seasonal butterfly exhibitions within a climate-controlled environment. A canopy walk elevated above the tree line offers views across the garden’s woodland section and into adjacent Piedmont Park. Seasonal installations of large-scale outdoor sculpture have become a regular feature of the garden’s programming, attracting visitors who come specifically for the art as much as the horticulture. The Children’s Garden provides a hands-on space designed for younger visitors, and the rose garden reaches peak bloom in late spring before Atlanta’s summer heat sets in fully.

The garden is open Tuesday through Sunday and select Mondays, with evening hours during summer months when illuminated garden events draw adults-oriented programming after dark. Spring and fall are the most comfortable seasons for extended outdoor visits. Purchasing tickets online in advance is recommended during peak periods and special exhibitions. The garden’s proximity to the Midtown MARTA station makes it accessible without a car from most central Atlanta locations.

Within a city that developed largely without formal green infrastructure planning, the Atlanta Botanical Garden represents a deliberate investment in horticultural expertise and public space. Its combination of serious plant collections, rotating art programming, and family amenities makes it one of the more versatile cultural institutions in the Midtown district.

A neoclassical mansion and its surrounding grounds in the Buckhead neighborhood house one of the most comprehensive collections of American decorative arts and Civil War artifacts in the Southeast. The Atlanta History Center occupies a thirty-three-acre campus anchored by the Swan House estate, with separate museum buildings, historic houses, and garden spaces that trace Atlanta’s development from its origins as a railroad terminus through the present day.

The main museum building holds the Centennial Olympic Games collection documenting Atlanta’s 1996 hosting of the Summer Olympics, alongside extensive Civil War galleries that approach the conflict from multiple perspectives including those of enslaved people, soldiers, and civilians caught in the Atlanta Campaign of 1864. The Smith Family Farm, a restored antebellum farmstead on the campus grounds, provides a living history complement to the indoor exhibits. Separate research archives hold one of the largest collections of Atlanta-related historical materials in the country, accessible to researchers by appointment.

The History Center is open Tuesday through Saturday with Sunday hours also available, and admission covers all on-campus sites including the Swan House and the farmstead. A full visit exploring all the campus components requires at least three to four hours. The campus is located in Buckhead and not easily walkable from MARTA, making personal or rideshare transportation the most practical option for most visitors. Weekday visits tend to be quieter than weekends.

In a city that has demolished much of its physical past in successive waves of development, the Atlanta History Center performs the essential function of curating what has been preserved. Its combination of house museums, archive, and thematic exhibition spaces gives it a scope that distinguishes it from Atlanta’s many more narrowly focused historical sites.

The stepped white building on Peachtree Street that houses the High Museum of Art has become as recognizable to Atlanta visitors as any single structure in the city, its Richard Meier-designed facade of white porcelain panels and angled skylights making a formal architectural statement before a visitor ever enters. Opened in 1983 and significantly expanded in 2005 with additional buildings by the same architect, the High is the largest art museum in the southeastern United States and serves as the region’s primary institution for major traveling exhibitions.

The permanent collection holds significant holdings in American art from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, alongside European paintings and decorative arts, African art, and a notable collection of self-taught Southern artists. The photography collection spans historical and contemporary work. Major traveling exhibitions from institutions in the United States and Europe rotate through the expanded gallery spaces regularly, bringing work to Atlanta that would otherwise require travel to see. The museum’s Folk Art and Photography galleries anchor sections of the permanent collection that differentiate it from more generalist encyclopedic museums.

The High is open Tuesday through Sunday, with extended Friday evening hours that include a popular social program. Permanent collection galleries are included with general admission, while major traveling exhibitions sometimes require separate tickets that benefit from advance purchase. The Midtown location is accessible from the Arts Center MARTA station on foot, making it one of the more transit-accessible major cultural institutions in the city.

In a region that lacks the concentration of major art museums found in larger coastal cities, the High Museum performs the function of primary repository for the visual arts across a territory that spans multiple southeastern states. Its architectural presence on Peachtree Street has helped establish Midtown as Atlanta’s cultural district over the past four decades.

A former railroad corridor that once carried freight through the heart of Atlanta became, after years of community organizing and development, one of the most ambitious urban trails in the American South. The Atlanta BeltLine follows the route of old rail lines encircling the city’s urban core, connecting neighborhoods that had been separated by industrial infrastructure for generations and threading through some of the most rapidly evolving real estate in Georgia.

The completed sections of the BeltLine include paved multi-use trails along the Eastside and Westside corridors, where cyclists, joggers, and pedestrians share a route lined with public art installations, community gardens, and direct access to neighborhood commercial districts. The Eastside Trail connects Midtown to Inman Park and Reynoldstown, passing through areas where former warehouses have been converted into restaurants and retail spaces. Parks along the route offer green space in neighborhoods that historically lacked it, and the trail system provides a practical transportation alternative for residents who live and work in adjacent areas.

The BeltLine can be accessed at multiple entry points and is open year-round without charge. Weekend mornings bring the heaviest pedestrian and cyclist traffic on the Eastside Trail sections nearest Ponce City Market. Evenings in spring and fall are particularly lively, with food vendors and informal gatherings concentrated near popular access points. The full Eastside Trail can be walked end to end in roughly an hour at a relaxed pace.

Few infrastructure projects in Atlanta’s recent history have reshaped as many neighborhoods simultaneously as the BeltLine. Its ongoing expansion continues to alter property values, transportation patterns, and the social geography of a city long organized around the automobile rather than walkable corridors.

River Street runs along the Savannah River waterfront on a narrow strip of cobblestone and brick, hemmed between the bluff above and the brown, slow-moving water below. The pavement is uneven underfoot — genuine ballast stones brought over as ship cargo in the 18th and 19th centuries — and the old cotton warehouses that line the inland side have been transformed into restaurants, galleries, and shops without losing their rough-hewn character. Cargo ships still pass close enough that you feel their scale from the walkway.

The street stretches roughly nine blocks and connects to the bluff above via steep ramps and iron staircases. Along the way, visitors encounter a mix of local seafood restaurants, bars serving Savannah’s signature to-go cups, souvenir shops, and small galleries carrying regional art. The waterfront plaza near the east end provides an open gathering space with views up and down the river, often hosting outdoor festivals and events on weekends.

Evenings are the liveliest time on River Street, particularly Thursday through Saturday, when the bars and restaurants fill and the cobblestones take on a different energy. Daytime visits are better for browsing shops and watching river traffic without the noise and crowds. Weekend afternoons can become very congested in peak season; mornings offer a quieter alternative with good light for photography along the waterfront.

River Street anchors Savannah’s tourism identity in a way that no other single block in the city does. Its combination of genuine historic fabric — the antebellum warehouse district is largely intact — with accessible waterfront dining and drinking makes it the natural starting point for first-time visitors. For those exploring the broader Historic District, it serves as the gravitational center from which Savannah’s squares and streets radiate northward.

The terra cotta facade of the Fox Theatre on Peachtree Street displays a Middle Eastern fantasy of minarets and decorative tilework that has made it one of the most architecturally singular entertainment venues in the American South since its opening in 1929. Built during the height of the movie palace era as a Shriners auditorium and then converted to a cinema, the Fox survived financial collapse and a demolition threat in the 1970s before a preservation campaign saved it and established it as a functioning performance venue it remains today.

The interior continues the atmospheric fantasy, with a ceiling designed to simulate a night sky complete with moving clouds and twinkling stars above an auditorium styled to resemble an Egyptian courtyard. The Grand Salon and other auxiliary spaces carry the decorative program throughout the building. The Fox hosts Broadway touring productions, concerts across multiple genres, comedy shows, and classic film screenings, maintaining a programming calendar that keeps the building in near-constant use. Guided tours of the building’s architectural features and backstage areas run on selected mornings and provide access to spaces not visible during performances.

The Fox is active year-round, and the touring Broadway season, typically running fall through spring, draws the largest audiences. Attending a performance provides the most complete experience of the building, as the theatrical lighting and full occupancy amplify the already elaborate setting. Tours run on Mondays, Thursdays, and select Saturdays, with advance booking recommended as group sizes are limited.

On a Midtown stretch of Peachtree Street anchored by hotels and office buildings, the Fox Theatre stands as an architectural outlier whose survival resulted directly from community effort rather than commercial logic. That history of preservation gives the building a different kind of value from most Atlanta landmarks.

Across Ivan Allen Jr. Boulevard from the Georgia Aquarium and the World of Coca-Cola, a bronze figure of John Lewis stands outside a building dedicated to the ongoing work of understanding civil and human rights as interconnected global struggles. The National Center for Civil and Human Rights opened in 2014 in downtown Atlanta, presenting the American civil rights movement of the mid-twentieth century alongside a broader examination of human rights campaigns from around the world, and positioning Atlanta’s local history within a planetary frame.

The civil rights galleries hold original documents, photographs, and artifacts from the movement, including materials related to the lunch counter sit-ins, the March on Washington, and the legislative campaigns that led to the Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act. An immersive simulation allows visitors to experience a version of the nonviolent resistance training conducted at lunch counters during the early 1960s. The human rights wing presents ongoing struggles for dignity and equality from different world regions, connecting the American story to international movements in ways that distinguish this museum from the more narrowly focused civil rights sites elsewhere in Atlanta.

The center is open daily except major holidays, with weekday mornings offering the quietest conditions for moving through the galleries at an unhurried pace. The content is emotionally demanding, and most visitors benefit from allowing three hours to absorb the material without rushing. The downtown location makes it easy to combine with Centennial Olympic Park and the adjacent attractions on the same visit.

As the city where the modern civil rights movement had some of its most defining moments, Atlanta has multiple sites addressing this history. The National Center for Civil and Human Rights distinguishes itself by insisting that Atlanta’s story cannot be understood in isolation from the broader arc of human rights globally, a framing that gives the institution a reach beyond regional commemoration.

Two Baptist congregations have occupied the same stretch of Auburn Avenue in the Old Fourth Ward, their histories intertwined with the civil rights movement in ways that make the block one of the most historically charged addresses in Atlanta. Ebenezer Baptist Church was the spiritual home of Martin Luther King Sr. for decades and the congregation where Martin Luther King Jr. was baptized, ordained, and served as co-pastor before his assassination in 1968, a continuous thread of pastoral connection spanning nearly a century of American social history.

The original 1914 sanctuary where King preached is preserved as part of the Martin Luther King Jr. National Historical Park, which administers the building and includes it on park tours. Visitors can enter the sanctuary and sit in the pews where King delivered sermons, a rare opportunity to occupy the physical space of a major civil rights figure rather than simply observe it through barriers. The newer Ebenezer congregation worships in an adjacent building completed in the 1990s, which also offers historical exhibits on the church’s role in the movement. Services at the active congregation are open to the public on Sunday mornings.

The church is open during National Historical Park hours, which run daily with seasonal variation. Tours of the sanctuary operate on a timed basis and may require waiting during peak visitation periods, particularly in summer and around federal holidays. The site pairs naturally with the King birth home and the nearby Freedom Hall complex, which together constitute the full extent of the historical park.

Among the sites associated with King in Atlanta, Ebenezer Baptist Church carries particular intimacy because it remained a functioning religious community rather than becoming purely a memorial. The layering of active congregation over preserved historical spaces gives the site a lived quality that distinguishes it from more static memorials.

On a summer afternoon, the meadows and walking paths of Piedmont Park fill with the organized chaos of a city that comes here to exhale, with cyclists threading past lawn games, families occupying the grassy slopes near the lake, and runners completing circuits of the park’s perimeter path. This 185-acre green space in Midtown has served as Atlanta’s primary urban park since the late nineteenth century, providing the kind of accessible open ground that is genuinely rare in a city built around the automobile and divided by highway infrastructure.

The park’s central lake reflects the Midtown skyline and offers a focal point for the grounds, surrounded by picnic areas and connected to wooded paths that extend into quieter sections of the park. The Active Oval provides a measured track for runners and walkers. A dog park draws a consistent crowd throughout the week, and the park hosts the annual Atlanta Dogwood Festival in spring along with multiple other outdoor events through the warmer months. The Atlanta Botanical Garden shares the park’s northern boundary, with a gate providing direct access between the two.

Piedmont Park is free and open daily from dawn until eleven at night. Weekend afternoons between May and September bring the largest crowds, particularly during scheduled events. Weekday mornings offer the most peaceful conditions for running or walking. Parking is limited in the surrounding streets, and the park is accessible via the Midtown MARTA station, making public transit a practical option.

In a metropolitan area characterized by suburban sprawl and limited walkable green space, Piedmont Park serves a function that goes beyond recreation. It anchors Midtown’s identity as Atlanta’s most pedestrian-friendly district and provides a gathering ground that connects the city’s fragmented neighborhoods through shared outdoor life.

Spanish moss hangs from the arms of ancient live oaks at Bonaventure Cemetery, casting long shadows over marble statues and granite monuments that date back to the 19th century. The cemetery sits on a bluff above the Wilmington River east of Savannah, and the combination of water views, old growth trees, and elaborate Victorian funerary sculpture gives it an atmosphere unlike any other burial ground in Georgia. It is, by any measure, one of the most visually striking cemeteries in the American South.

Bonaventure was established in 1846 on the site of a former plantation, and its grounds reflect the tastes of Savannah’s prosperous families who filled it with ornate tombs, weeping angel statues, and elaborate ironwork. The cemetery gained wider recognition after featuring prominently in John Berendt’s 1994 book set in Savannah, which brought visitors specifically looking for the locations described within it. Notable residents include poet Conrad Aiken, whose grave serves as a gathering point for those who know his work.

Morning visits offer the best light for photography and the calmest atmosphere — the cemetery opens early and closes in the late afternoon. Tours are available and highly recommended for those interested in the historical narratives attached to specific monuments. Self-guided walks are equally rewarding with a printed map. The grounds are genuine working cemetery, so respectful behavior is expected throughout.

Within the Savannah region, Bonaventure occupies a unique cultural position — part historical archive, part landscape art, part literary landmark. Its reputation extends well beyond Georgia, drawing people who might not otherwise visit a cemetery simply because its beauty and layered history make it something different from the ordinary. No other site in the area combines natural grandeur, Victorian sculpture, and biographical depth in quite the same way.

A few blocks west of the Savannah River waterfront, City Market occupies a brick-paved block that has served as a commercial gathering place since the 18th century. The current iteration — a pedestrian-friendly complex of restored warehouse buildings surrounding an open courtyard — gives it a scale that feels manageable and genuinely lively rather than overwhelmingly touristy. On warm evenings, the courtyard fills with live music, outdoor dining, and the kind of unhurried foot traffic that Savannah does particularly well.

The market district holds a curated mix of art galleries, jewelry shops, clothing boutiques, and restaurants representing both local Southern cooking and international cuisines. Several galleries feature work by Savannah College of Art and Design students and alumni, giving the retail mix an artistic credibility. Horse-drawn carriage tours frequently begin nearby, making City Market a common orientation point for visitors beginning to navigate the Historic District.

Evenings from Thursday through Saturday are the busiest and most energetic, with live entertainment in the courtyard and wait times at the more popular restaurants. Daytime visits are calmer and better suited for browsing galleries and shops without distraction. The market is open year-round, and mild winter days can be ideal for exploring without summer crowds. Most visitors spend one to three hours, though the adjacent streets extend the experience further.

Savannah City Market sits at a crossroads between the commercial waterfront of River Street and the residential squares of the Historic District, functioning as a transitional zone where the city’s tourism economy and its arts community overlap. It provides a more curated alternative to the River Street strip, with higher concentration of locally owned businesses and a somewhat more relaxed character, particularly during afternoon hours.

A sixty-yard field stretches through the center of the building, and visitors who have watched football for decades sometimes stop at the entrance when they realize the scale of what has been constructed indoors on Marietta Street in downtown Atlanta. The College Football Hall of Fame relocated from Indiana to Atlanta in 2014, choosing a city with deep ties to the sport and situating itself within walking distance of the stadium where the Atlanta Falcons play their home games.

The museum’s central feature is the indoor field, used for interactive activities and programming throughout the day. Exhibits spiraling through multiple levels of the building trace the history of college football from its nineteenth-century origins through the present era of conference realignment and expanded playoff formats. Individual school halls allow visitors to locate their own team’s history within the broader narrative, and a collection of helmets representing hundreds of programs forms one of the more visually arresting displays. The Hall of Fame induction ceremonies and affiliated programming draw larger crowds during specific event windows tied to the football calendar.

The museum is open daily, with extended hours during peak tourist periods and football season weekends. Visitors who are engaged fans of the sport will find the material absorbs three to four hours easily, while casual visitors may move through more quickly. The downtown Marietta Street location is accessible from the GWCC/CNN Center MARTA station and sits near Centennial Olympic Park.

College football carries an intensity in the southeastern United States that has no direct parallel in other American regions, and Atlanta’s position as a hub for SEC and ACC competition makes it a logical home for the sport’s national hall of fame. The institution reflects both the sport’s cultural weight in the South and Atlanta’s ambition to consolidate major sports tourism infrastructure in its urban core.

The land sat derelict for decades, an industrial remnant in the middle of Atlanta, before the 1996 Summer Olympics transformed it into a public green space that anchored the revival of the entire downtown district. Centennial Olympic Park commemorates the city’s role as Olympic host while functioning as an active gathering ground for concerts, festivals, and everyday use by residents and visitors navigating the cluster of major attractions that grew up around it.

The park’s most photographed feature is the Fountain of Rings, a five-ring configuration that references the Olympic symbol and shoots water in timed sequences during warmer months, drawing families and children into the spray during summer afternoons. Bronze athletic sculptures and commemorative brick pavers carrying donors’ names from the original fundraising campaign are embedded throughout the grounds. The park hosts major outdoor events throughout the year, from holiday light installations in winter to free summer concerts, and its green lawns provide a rare flat open space in a city known for its rolling topography and tree cover.

The park is open year-round and free to enter, though events sometimes require separate tickets. Summer visits coincide with fountain activity and outdoor programming but also bring Atlanta’s characteristic heat and humidity. Evenings in spring and fall offer the most pleasant conditions for a relaxed walk through the grounds. The surrounding area includes the Georgia Aquarium, World of Coca-Cola, and the National Center for Civil and Human Rights, all within easy walking distance.

In a city that for years struggled with a neglected downtown core, Centennial Olympic Park represents one of the more successful urban transformations of the modern era. Its legacy is less about athletic history than about the long-term civic investment that followed the games.

Chippewa Square on Bull Street holds a particular place in Savannah’s popular imagination — the bench where Forrest Gump sat and shared his box of chocolates was filmed here, and visitors still seek out the spot even though the bench itself is now in a museum rather than on the square. But Chippewa’s identity runs deeper than a film reference. The square was laid out in 1815 and named for the Battle of Chippewa, and the bronze statue at its center depicts General James Oglethorpe, founder of Georgia, in a pose that surveys the city he designed from the square that bears his name on street maps rather than his own.

The surrounding buildings include the Historic Savannah Theatre on the southern end, one of the oldest continuously operating theaters in the United States, along with a mix of historic commercial facades and residential buildings that give the square a sense of architectural variety. The square itself is well-maintained, with mature live oaks providing shade and the standard Savannah furnishings of iron benches and brick paths.

Chippewa Square is accessible at all hours without charge and is at its most atmospheric in the cooler months when the trees are less fully leafed and the light reaches more of the ground. It sits in the geographic center of the Bull Street corridor, making it a natural midpoint on any north-south walking tour of the Historic District. The Savannah Theatre makes evening visits productive for those combining a show with time in the square beforehand.

Within Savannah’s grid of 22 historic squares, Chippewa occupies a central and well-trafficked position that has made it one of the most photographed. The combination of the Oglethorpe statue, the theater history, and the film connection gives it multiple layers of meaning that reward visitors regardless of which aspect draws them there first.

A pale yellow Regency townhouse on the corner of Oglethorpe Avenue marks the birthplace of Juliette Gordon Low, the woman who founded the Girl Scouts of the USA in Savannah in 1912. The house, built in the late 18th century and expanded in the 19th, has been a historic site since 1956 — the first National Historic Landmark in Georgia designated to honor a woman. For the millions of Girl Scouts and their families who visit each year, it carries a significance that goes well beyond architectural merit.

The interior has been restored to reflect the period of Juliette Gordon Low’s childhood and early adulthood, with furnishings and family objects that ground the biography in physical detail. Guided tours cover both the house itself and the story of Low’s life — her artistic work, her years in England, her friendship with Lord Robert Baden-Powell who founded the Boy Scouts, and the founding of the Girl Scouts with 18 girls in Savannah. The tours are well-organized and suitable for visitors of all ages.

The birthplace is open Tuesday through Sunday with timed entry tours running throughout the day. Advanced reservations are strongly recommended, particularly for spring visits when school groups and families arrive in large numbers. The tour lasts approximately an hour. The house sits conveniently within the Historic District near other significant sites, making it easy to incorporate into a walking itinerary.

In Savannah’s landscape of antebellum houses and general history, the Juliette Gordon Low Birthplace stands apart for its focus on a woman whose impact extended far beyond Georgia. The organization she founded now counts millions of members globally, and for many visitors, this house is a pilgrimage destination rather than simply a stop on a Savannah itinerary — a distinction that gives it a particular emotional weight.

Jekyll Island sits off the Georgia coast at the southern end of the state’s barrier island chain, accessible by a causeway that marks the transition from mainland to salt marsh, maritime forest, and long Atlantic beaches. The island spent decades at the end of the 19th century as a private retreat for some of America’s wealthiest families — the Rockefellers, Vanderbilts, and Morgans among others — who built a compound of winter cottages that still stands in what is now the Jekyll Island Historic District. The state of Georgia purchased the island in 1947 and has managed it as a public resource since.

The historic district contains Gilded Age cottages and common buildings explorable on foot, by bicycle, or on guided tours. The beaches stretch for miles on the Atlantic side, with the south end featuring rock formations unusual for Georgia’s sandy coast. Development on the island is limited by law — a significant portion must remain undeveloped — giving it a quieter and more natural character than most Georgia coast destinations.

Spring and fall offer the most comfortable conditions with fewer visitors than summer. Sea turtle nesting season runs roughly May through October, and organized turtle walks are available in summer. Allow at least a full day to cover the historic district and spend meaningful time on the beaches. The causeway toll gives the island a slight sense of arrival that contributes to its distinct atmosphere.

Among Georgia’s barrier islands, Jekyll holds a singular position — combining accessible Atlantic beaches, an intact Gilded Age resort complex, and protected natural areas within a single managed environment. The pairing of social history and coastal ecology gives it depth that purely recreational beach destinations lack, making it worth the journey from Savannah for visitors with an extra day in the region.

Atlanta’s oldest surviving cemetery spreads across forty-eight acres just south of downtown, its Victorian-era landscape of oaks, magnolias, and ornate funerary monuments offering a quiet contrast to the surrounding neighborhoods. Oakland Cemetery opened in 1850 and served as the primary burial ground for Atlanta residents through the Civil War era and well into the twentieth century, accumulating a population of notable Georgians, ordinary citizens, Confederate soldiers, and freed enslaved people whose graves reflect the full complexity of the city’s history.

The grounds contain the graves of Margaret Mitchell, golf legend Bobby Jones, and multiple Georgia governors, alongside sections that document the separate burial practices imposed on African Americans and on Atlanta’s Jewish community during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The Bell Tower, a Victorian Gothic structure near the main entrance, serves as an orientation point for exploring the grounds. Seasonal tours organized by the Historic Oakland Foundation cover different thematic aspects of the cemetery’s history, from architectural funerary art to the stories of specific residents buried here.

Oakland is open to the public daily without charge during daylight hours. Weekday mornings offer the most contemplative atmosphere for a self-guided walk, while weekend tours and seasonal events bring larger groups. The annual Sunday in the Park event in late October transforms the grounds into an outdoor festival with food, music, and living history programming that draws thousands of visitors. Sturdy walking shoes are advisable, as the ground is uneven throughout much of the site.

In a metropolitan area that has rebuilt and demolished most of its nineteenth-century fabric, Oakland Cemetery preserves an undisturbed physical record of Atlanta’s earliest decades. The juxtaposition of elaborate Victorian monuments with the simple markers of the city’s most marginalized residents makes it one of the more honest historical documents the city possesses.