A self-guided route you drive or walk, in your own car, on your own day.
Forrest Gump in four stops: the square and the steeple the feather falls past, the square where the bench stood, and the bench itself, in a museum three blocks away.
All of them, free to read.
4 stops
JeffersonLH, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons01The scene
The film opens on a feather drifting down over a town, and the first of it that is Savannah is this square. Visit Savannah says keen viewers will know Madison Square from the opening shot, and a Savannah guide names St. John's Episcopal Church and the Scottish Rite building behind it. Neither is a production source, so take it as theirs. The church is on the west side of the square; the feather goes on north up Bull Street toward Chippewa Square.
Bull St at W Charlton St, Savannah, GA
Michael Rivera, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons02From the street
The scene
The film opens on a feather falling over a town and coming down at Forrest's feet. Two Savannah guides name this steeple, at Bull Street and Oglethorpe Avenue, as the one it passes; no production source says so, so take it as theirs. The church is a working one and the steeple is seen best from the square below.
The Week
This walk is free, and stays free. A route puts them in order, tells you what was filmed at each and how to get round them, and comes as an app for the day itself.
$4.99 for 7 days · One payment, nothing renews.
Your seven days start in town, when you press Start the day on a paid route or arrive at one of its stops.
Get the Week in the app, $4.99Savannah, Georgia Lowcountry
The Bench Walk
Sorted by distance on the day
It starts at Madison Square, Bull St at W Charlton St, Savannah, GA and ends at Savannah History Museum, 303 Martin Luther King Jr Blvd, Savannah, GA. The stops are ordered so the route does not double back.
15 min walking between 4 stops, covering 0.9 miles. That is the measured travel alone. How long you stay at each stop is up to you.
Not all of them are walk-ups. Savannah History Museum needs a ticket. The rest are public and free to stand at.
Forrest Gump, across 4 locations in and around Savannah.
207 Bull St, Savannah, GA
Michael Rivera, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons03The scene
Forrest tells his story to whoever sits down next to him, on a bus stop bench on the north edge of the square with the Oglethorpe monument behind him. There was never a bench here: it was built for the film, and the production turned the traffic round the square so the buses could pull in. Nothing marks the spot now; one guide says the square's sign stands about where it was.
Bull St at W McDonough St, Savannah, GA
Ebyabe, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons04Admission
The scene
This is where the bench went: one of about half a dozen built for the film, given to the city by Paramount, and the museum's most popular object by its curator's account. It sits on a platform behind a low fence. Sources disagree on whether this one is the bench in the shot or one of its copies, and another is on the Paramount lot, so it is a bench from the film rather than the bench. The museum is ticketed.
303 Martin Luther King Jr Blvd, Savannah, GA