Savannah

Savannah was planned by James Oglethorpe in 1733 with a grid of public squares that has never been replicated elsewhere in America. Twenty-two of the original squares survive — surrounded by Federal and Regency townhouses, live oaks draped in Spanish moss, and the kind of streets that still feel like the 18th century when you walk them at dawn.

The city’s hotels are part of its architectural fabric. Most of them occupy buildings that have been something else first — hospitals, warehouses, private mansions, boarding houses for cotton traders. The Marshall House, on Broughton Street since 1851, is the oldest continuously operating hotel in Georgia. Its original pine floors creak with a particular authority. During a renovation in 1999, workers found human bones beneath them — remnants of the two stints the building served as a Union Army hospital during the Civil War. The hotel handled this with institutional seriousness, reinterred the remains, and continued serving guests.

Savannah is called America’s most haunted city, a reputation it maintains with aggressive confidence and genuine historical scaffolding. The ghost stories here have actual documented events behind them. You can believe none of it and still find the history unsettling in the best possible way.

The city is also simply beautiful in a way that stops conversations mid-sentence. If you’ve never been, walk from the train station to your hotel instead of taking a cab. The first hour in Savannah is one the better travel experiences in the American South.