Although a relatively small city of about 150,000 people, Savannah has occupied a place of national significance on many occasions since its founding in 1733. Conceived as a place of religious tolerance and freedom, the city welcomed early congregations of Jews, Methodists, Lutherans and African Baptists. It was also established with the military in mind, a strategic importance that led to the second bloodiest battle of the American Revolution — the failed French and American siege of British-controlled Savannah in 1779 — and the first use in history of rifled cannons on a masonry fortification, forever changing warfare worldwide, with the Union assault on Fort Pulaski in 1862. The invention of the cotton gin at a nearby plantation in 1793 revolutionized the southern economy and made Savannah a major shipping port and railway center. Beyond cotton, the city was the world’s largest exporter of naval stores a century ago and today boasts one of the busiest ports in the country. Among the nation’s firsts to come from Savannah were the first experimental garden, the first Sunday school, the first steam ship to cross the ocean, and the first girl scouts.

The city’s greatest significance today, however, exists in its urban and architectural heritage. Savannah possesses one of the most renowned urban plans in the world, characterized by a harmonious interplay of squares, buildings, monuments and trees — a pedestrian-friendly environment that attracts architects and city planners from around the world. Since the 1950s, the city has been a leader in the historic preservation movement. The downtown area, with over 1,500 historic structures, is the largest National Historic Landmark District in the country. Seven other historic districts listed on the National Register contain thousands more historic buildings within the city’s late 19th- and early 20th-century street car suburbs.

Notable individual historic buildings representing virtually every style from the 18th through 20th centuries can be found in the Savannah area. Among the city’s landmarks are Regency style houses designed by English architect William Jay, one of the early professionally trained architects to practice in America, the best preserved and most complete 19th-century railway complex in the country — that of the Central of Georgia Railroad — and the first air-conditioned apartment building in the state of Georgia, the international style Drayton Tower (1949-51).

The area surrounding Savannah, called the Lowcountry, includes the coastal regions of Georgia and nearby South Carolina. Here, vernacular traditions define a unique cultural landscape characterized by the coastal activities of rice cultivation, shrimping, oystering, recreation, trade; the impact of the various early German settlers (Lutherans and Salzbergers) and of African-Americans, including the distinctive Gullah and Geechee communities; the manifestations of Creole architecture.  The Savannah and the Lowcountry Initiative (SALI) is an educational effort engaged in uncovering, recording, preserving and presenting history through archival research, fieldwork, drawing and writing on the area's architecture and cultural landscape.

Savannah’s close proximity to two other well-preserved historic urban landscapes — Charleston, S.C., to the north and St. Augustine, Fla., to the south — further enhances the wealth of colonial and later historic architecture readily available for study. Nearby Atlanta offers important examples of 20th-century and contemporary design.