36 Hours in Savannah, Ga.

Away from the Historic District, where you’ll likely spend more of your time, an old oyster and crab factory on the edge of a marsh was converted into the Pin Point Heritage Museum (adult tickets, $15). The museum explores the history and traditions of the Gullah Geechee people, who descended from enslaved people from West and Central Africa working on rice, cotton and indigo plantations. Exhibits — including displays of traditional art and the accounts of community members’ experiences — show how isolation on coastal and island plantations led them to create a culture, food and language of their own, drawing heavily on influences carried from Africa.

Savannahians describe their city as built on the bones of the dead, and that’s why ghosts abound. At the entrance of the Savannah Paranormal Museum (tickets, $24.99), a detailed wall map pinpoints the city’s many allegedly haunted houses — and then expands from there. The small museum, which opened last year, covers the creatures, apparitions and mysteries eluding prosaic explanation. Displays include examples of the spirit-handling methods of the Gullah Geechee, a life-size bust of a mythical snakelike creature of local origins called the Altamaha-ha, slices of toast produced by a “demonic” toaster and a collection of “possessed” dolls. The museum takes steps to protect visitors: Moats made of salt line haunted items to keep nefarious spirits at bay.

Situated in the Historic District, but removed just enough from the hustle and bustle, Noble Fare captures an ideal of Savannah: secluded and special, tasteful and just the right amount of relaxed. The restaurant is the perfect setting to ease into a weekend in the city, with a long and delectable feast. “Duck-Duck-No-Goose” (duck breast, risotto and sweet-and-tangy gooseberry sauce, $45) is one of the chef’s personal favorites, which is why it has been a mainstay on the menu for years.

The historic heart of Savannah is best experienced by strolling, drifting between the squares with stately old homes, cafes, shops and churches. In what is essentially the grandest of those squares, the city’s flagship Forsyth Park, shop for pastries and produce at a farmers’ market every Saturday. Walk over to Lafayette Square to visit the Cathedral Basilica of St. John the Baptist, referred to by some as the Sistine of the South for its many murals (suggested $3 donation). SCADstory, a few blocks over, offers a sweeping, immersive demonstration of creativity of Savannah College of Art and Design students and gives a sense of how the school has become such a cultural force in the city (suggested $5 donation; advance reservations recommended).

In the city’s evolving Thomas Square neighborhood, the cozy Laundry Diner opened last year in an old laundromat with a somewhat adventurous approach to staples of Southern comfort. Highlights include a short-rib hash bowl ($18), fried catfish and grits ($21) and a chicken biscuit ($13) served with foie gras. (It gets a bit more daring for its weekday happy hour menu, which features a burger topped with Cap’n Crunch on an English muffin.)

The Telfair Museums, three sites within a short walk of one another, collectively tell a story of Savannah ($30 pass, unlimited access to all three locations for one week). The Telfair Academy, the oldest public art museum in the South, includes one of Savannah’s most famous sculptures, known as Bird Girl, which appeared on the cover of “Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil,” the blockbuster book credited with helping turn the city into a tourist destination. The bright and glassy Jepson Center, conspicuous amid Savannah’s historic architecture, features traveling exhibitions and contemporary local works, and also houses the Telfair Children’s Art Museum, opened in 2023. There, see a colorful, interactive display with the maritime drawings of William O. Golding, whose story begins with his kidnapping from the Savannah waterfront at 8 years old. And tours of the Owens-Thomas House and its slave quarters capture an ugly history in which genteel opulence and oppression existed side by side in Savannah.

A Savannah True History Tours guide makes no bones about it: “This is the buzzkill tour of Savannah,” he told us. He eviscerated many of the ghost stories still being recounted to groups we passed on other companies’ tours on the two-hour nighttime walk (adult tickets are $29). Still, that didn’t make the lore of Savannah any less bizarre, unsettling and riveting. It covers the cycles of death and renewal that etch Savannah’s history, the time a serial killer came to town, and unanswered questions about the identity of the body interred at a towering memorial dedicated to Casimir Pulaski, a Polish nobleman and soldier regarded as a hero for his service for the Continental Army during the Revolutionary War.

Climb the staircase off an alleyway and leave behind genteel and old-fashioned Savannah for a cosmopolitan late-night hangout with exposed brick and neon lights perched above the Historic District. Untitled., which opened last year, has small plates inspired by Japanese street food, like skewers with tender chunks of flat iron steak ($28) or tiger shrimp ($18), known as kushiyaki, and craft cocktails and mocktails, like the zesty and colorful karkade, another name for hibiscus tea ($13).

It’s one of the quintessential images of Savannah: the archway with the wrought iron gate and a canopy of moss-covered live oak that seems to go on forever. Strolling down that avenue is, for many, the main draw of the Wormsloe State Historic Site, once an estate belonging to Noble Jones, one of the first settlers of colonial Georgia, and now a state park. But the site also includes ruins of one of the oldest standing structures in the state, seven miles of nature trails and a vantage point to look out at a horizon of wheat-colored marshes. The site also offers shuttle tours (included with park access) where guides unfurl the history of it all. (Single-day passes are $12.)

A Greyhound Bus Terminal, built in 1938, was lovingly restored to reflect its full glory, with Art Deco paneling, a horseshoe bar and a wall of windows allowing light to fill the towering space. But the aesthetic alone isn’t why the Grey, the restaurant housed there, routinely ranks on lists of the city’s best places to dine. The chef Mashama Bailey, a New York City native, draws on childhood experience in Georgia to capture the essence of Savannah’s mix of gastronomical traditions. She nails pure Southern classics, like the fried chicken and hoe cakes, akin to a mashup of pancakes and cornbread, served for Sunday brunch that balance crunchy, salty and sweet ($18). A rotating selection of pastries might include lemon-ginger scones or apple brown betties, a cousin of an apple crisp or cobbler.