Savannah

On 12 February 1733 General James Oglethorpe and settlers from the ship Anne landed at Yamacraw Bluff above the Savannah River, where they were welcomed by the Yamacraw leader Tomochichi and the traders John and Mary Musgrove. Oglethorpe laid out the town on a plan of wards built around small public squares, a design that downtown still largely keeps. Savannah was the capital of the colony and later the first state capital of Georgia, and silk and indigo were among its early exports to England. By the Revolution it was the southernmost commercial port in the Thirteen Colonies.

After independence, cotton grown on plantations and shipped through the port made the city's merchants rich, and Savannah was a prosperous seaport throughout the 19th century. In the Civil War Union guns breached Fort Pulaski in April 1862, and in December 1864 Savannah was the goal of Sherman's March to the Sea; on 21 December local authorities negotiated a peaceful surrender to spare the city, and Union troops marched in at dawn.

In the 1950s urban development destroyed three squares — Ellis Square was demolished for a parking garage — though the downtown as a whole is now one of the largest National Historic Landmark Districts in the country. The Savannah College of Art and Design was founded in 1978, and John Berendt's 1994 book Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil made Bonaventure Cemetery and the Mercer Williams House famous. In 2024 Calhoun Square was renamed Taylor Square.

Savannah still calls itself the Hostess City of the South, and its identity is bound up with its squares and its old houses. Christ Church, founded with the colony in 1733, is the longest continuous Christian congregation in Georgia; First African Baptist is one of the oldest African American Baptist congregations in the country, and First Bryan Baptist was organised in 1788; and a Jewish community has been here since 1733, with Congregation Mickve Israel on Monterey Square. Gullah Geechee culture from the coast and islands is part of the city's heritage.

St. Patrick's Day is a high point of the year. The city has hosted celebrations since 1824, and Savannah is one of only two places in the United States where the day is a legal holiday. The songwriter Johnny Mercer was born here, and the novelist Flannery O'Connor grew up here; her childhood home is now a museum. The Savannah Book Festival brings dozens of authors to the squares each February.

The Savannah College of Art and Design gives the city a large student and creative population and owns several historic theatres, among them the Lucas Theatre of 1921. The Savannah Bananas, a barnstorming baseball team, have made their showman's version of the game, Banana Ball, famous far beyond the city.

Savannah had 147,780 people at the 2020 census and an estimated 149,440 in 2025, with about 438,000 in the metropolitan area. The city divides into six main areas — Downtown, Midtown, Southside, Eastside, Westside and the recently annexed Southwest — with more than 100 neighbourhoods.

The port is the backbone of the economy: it is North America's fourth-largest for container traffic and handled 4.9 million containers in 2023. Gulfstream Aerospace builds private jets here, the British equipment maker JCB has its North American headquarters nearby in Pooler, and tourism, hospitals and the colleges — SCAD, Savannah State University and Georgia Southern's Armstrong Campus among them — employ many more.

The city lies just above sea level, and heavy rain and hurricane storm surge bring a real risk of flooding. Violent crime is concentrated in some neighbourhoods and has risen and fallen over the years. Daily life in the historic district mixes residents, students and visitors.

Savannah's cooking is Southern and coastal. Southern home cooking is the speciality of Mrs. Wilkes' Dining Room, a casual and popular restaurant in an 1870 house, which Sema Wilkes ran for 59 years. Seafood comes from the marshes and the sea islands, and neighbouring Thunderbolt is a shrimping village.

The Olde Pink House, a restaurant and tavern in a building of 1771 on Reynolds Square, was once known as Habersham House, and Leopold's Ice Cream has been made in the city since 1919, when two Greek immigrant brothers opened their parlour. Across the region, the dishes of the wider South — fried chicken, biscuits, grits, collard greens and cornbread — are everyday fare.

River Street's warehouses hold many of the bars and restaurants that visitors see first, while the City Market blocks offer small eateries, outdoor plazas and evening crowds. Restaurants across the historic district range from casual Southern lunch counters to formal dining rooms.