Bonaventure Cemetery Tour — What to Expect

If you have only seen Bonaventure Cemetery in photographs, the real place is even more striking — and a guided tour is the best way to make sense of it. This is a first-timer’s guide to what a Bonaventure Cemetery tour is actually like: where you meet, what you see, how long it takes, and what to bring. When you are ready to pick a tour, our Savannah cemetery tours page lays out every option side by side.

What Bonaventure Cemetery Actually Is

Bonaventure is a 160-acre Victorian “garden cemetery” established in 1846 on a bluff above the Wilmington River, a few miles east of downtown Savannah. The land was a plantation before it became a cemetery, which is why the live oaks are so old and so enormous — many predate the graves beneath them. A garden cemetery was designed to be walked and admired like a park, not just visited in grief, and that design intent is exactly why a tour works so well here.

The cemetery is open to the public daily, and you are allowed to visit on your own. But the grounds are large and the layout is not obvious, so without a guide most first-timers wander, miss the significant monuments, and leave without the stories. A guide knows precisely where everything is and why it matters.

Where You Meet

Meeting points depend on which tour you book:

For the walking tour, the guide is at the meeting point 10–15 minutes before the scheduled start; you simply give your name to check in. The golf cart operator texts specific directions before your tour, so keep your phone handy. Note that there is a parking fee at the Savannah Visitors Center for the combined Bonaventure & Wormsloe tour, and parking generally is not included.

What You’ll See

A good Bonaventure tour is part history, part art history, and part nature walk. Expect your guide to focus on three things:

• The monuments. Bonaventure is famous for its Victorian funerary sculpture — marble angels, draped urns, and symbolic carvings. Guides explain the symbolism: what a broken column means, why a hand points upward, what the lambs and doves represent.
• The people. Notable Savannahians buried here include Academy Award-winning songwriter Johnny Mercer, poet Conrad Aiken, Georgia’s first governor Edward Telfair, philanthropist Mary Telfair, and Gracie Watson — a young child whose lifelike statue is one of the most-visited graves in the cemetery.
• The setting. The live oaks draped in Spanish moss are the signature image of Bonaventure. Spanish moss is not actually moss and not a parasite — it is an air plant that takes nothing from the tree, simply draping itself over the branches.

Reading the Monuments

One of the quiet pleasures of a guided tour is learning to “read” a Victorian cemetery. Bonaventure’s monuments are a vocabulary of 19th-century symbolism, and once a guide points it out, you see it everywhere:

Bonaventure is also studded with marble angels and lifelike figures, the funerary art style that gives the cemetery its Southern-Gothic reputation. A guide explains not just what the symbols mean, but why a particular family chose them — which is where the history and the art history meet.

The Famous Graves

The cemetery’s notable burials are scattered across its sections, and finding them on your own is genuinely difficult. A guide takes you straight to them:

• Johnny Mercer — the Academy Award-winning songwriter behind “Moon River,” whose family plot is among the most-visited spots in the cemetery.
• Conrad Aiken — the Pulitzer Prize-winning poet, whose grave is shaped like a bench so visitors can sit and look out over the Wilmington River.
• Edward and Mary Telfair — Georgia’s first governor and his philanthropist relative, names woven through Savannah’s history.
• Gracie Watson — the most photographed grave in Bonaventure: the lifelike statue of a six-year-old girl who died in the 1880s.

If you know Bonaventure mainly from the book that made it famous, our guide to ‘Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil’ and Bonaventure Cemetery covers the Bird Girl statue and the Savannah the book describes.

How Long It Takes

The golf cart tour is the quickest way to cover the most ground — useful in summer heat or with children. The walking tour goes deeper at a slower pace. The full-day Bonaventure & Wormsloe tour pairs the cemetery with a colonial historic site and a cookie-company tasting stop, with transportation handled between each.

What to Bring

• Comfortable shoes. Even the golf cart tour involves walking between monuments, and the cemetery paths are uneven in places.
• Water and sun protection in the warmer months — the oak shade is real, but the moss provides almost none.
• A camera. Bonaventure is one of the most photographed places in the South for good reason.
• Walking tours can usually provide umbrellas, rain ponchos, a walking cane, or portable seating on request, so a little rain need not cancel your plans — one walking tour even operates in all weather conditions.

Is It Right for You?

Bonaventure tours focus on beauty, art, and history rather than scares, so they suit history-minded travelers, photographers, and families with curious children. They are a gentler experience than a downtown ghost tour. A few practical notes: the golf cart tour is stroller-accessible but not wheelchair-accessible, while the standard walking tour is both wheelchair- and stroller-accessible. Travelers with back or heart conditions should check the specific tour’s notes before booking.

Ready to Book?

Now that you know what to expect, compare the walking, golf cart, and full-day options on our Savannah cemetery tours page and reserve the one that fits your group. Most tours include free cancellation, so booking ahead carries no risk.