Savannah

Spanish moss hangs low enough in Savannah's squares to brush the tops of park benches, filtering the Georgia light into something softer and older than the city itself. Down on River Street the cobblestones hold their warmth long after sunset, and the clip of hooves arrives before the carriage does, echoing between cotton warehouses turned restaurants.

Savannah still runs on the grid General James Oglethorpe drew in 1733, and twenty-two of his park squares survive, each with its own monument, canopy and mood. Around them spreads one of the largest National Historic Landmark districts in the United States, its restored eighteenth-century houses threaded between museums and more than a hundred restaurants. Forsyth Park's cast-iron fountain of 1858 anchors the southern end beneath an avenue of oaks. The city's long conversation with its dead runs out to Bonaventure Cemetery on the Wilmington River, where John Muir camped among the tombs in 1867 and wrote a chapter about the experience. A to-go cup carried from square to square is a local institution, and it lends the whole district a street-café ease few American cities manage.