Savannah: Spanish moss and colonial squares

Georgia's first city, Savannah preserves twenty-two shaded squares lined by ancient oaks draped in Spanish moss, in one of the American South's best-preserved historic centers.

The historic center, designed around twenty-two shaded squares, is comfortably explored on foot.

Designed in 1733 according to a grid urban plan with regular squares, Forsyth Park hosts a nineteenth-century fountain surrounded by oak trees draped with Spanish moss.

Walking among historic squares, you encounter the Cathedral of Saint John the Baptist, with its twin Gothic spires.

Descending toward the river, you reach River Street, along the historic port, where nineteenth-century brick warehouses now house shops and restaurants.

Toward evening, Bonaventure Cemetery, made famous by the novel 'Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil', offers a evocative sunset among statues and shaded pathways.

The Spanish moss covering the oak trees of Savannah is not a parasite: it is an epiphytic plant that absorbs water and nutrients from the air without harming the trees it grows on.

The original twenty-two squares designed in the eighteenth century have survived nearly intact to today, making Savannah a rare example of colonial urban planning preserved at this scale in the United States.