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A private Bonaventure Cemetery tour with real one-on-one time with a local historian.
A private Bonaventure Cemetery walk with direct conversation and question time with a local guide, reaching further into the roughly 160-acre grounds than a standard public tour.
While public Bonaventure tours are entertaining, this private tour allows for greater exploring opportunities and direct conversation and question-asking with your guide. As Bonaventure Cemetery covers roughly 160 acres, public tours only cover a fraction of it, while this private walk takes you into off-the-beaten-path areas most visitors never see.
A popular starting point — every Voyzo itinerary is fully customizable, so we'll shape the order and stops around your group.
Meet your guide at Bonaventure Cemetery.
See far more of Bonaventure Cemetery's roughly 160 acres than a standard public tour covers.
Ask questions and go deeper into the stories that interest you most.
Learn from a guide who specializes in Bonaventure's history and famous residents.
Back to your hotel, home, or the airport — whenever your day wraps up.
Every group size is covered — from an intimate private ride to large multi-coach groups.
Up to 6
A fast, private ride for couples, small families, or business travelers — plenty of luggage room and a smooth, quiet cabin.
Up to 14
Comfortable, air-conditioned seating for small and mid-size groups — our most popular option for families and friend groups traveling together.
Up to 56
Our largest single vehicle — a full-size luxury motorcoach for large groups, conventions, and corporate events that still want one private tour, one vehicle.
A private Bonaventure Cemetery walk with direct conversation and question time with a local guide, reaching further into the roughly 160-acre grounds than a standard public tour. While public Bonaventure tours are entertaining, this private tour allows for greater exploring opportunities and direct conversation and question-asking with your guide. As Bonaventure Cemetery covers roughly 160 acres, public tours only cover a fraction of it, while this private walk takes you into off-the-beaten-path areas most visitors never see.
The single most famous real story connected to Bonaventure involves a statue that, strictly speaking, isn't even in the cemetery anymore. The Bird Girl is a bronze sculpture made in 1936 by artist Sylvia Shaw Judson, modeled on a young girl named Lorraine Greenman whom Judson spotted at a dance recital. One of four castings was purchased by Savannahian Lucy Boyd Trosdal, who installed it at her family's Bonaventure plot around 1940 under the name "Little Wendy." It sat there largely unnoticed for roughly 50 years until 1993, when photographer Jack Leigh — searching the cemetery for a cover image for John Berendt's then-unpublished book — found it on the second day of his search.
After "Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil" was published in 1994 with the Bird Girl on its cover, the statue became internationally famous almost overnight, and so many visitors began chipping pieces off its granite base as souvenirs that the Trosdal family had it removed from Bonaventure entirely in 1997 and placed on permanent display at Telfair Museums downtown, where it still stands today. It's exactly the kind of detail a public walking tour tends to skip over — a guide who specializes in Bonaventure can tell you precisely where the statue once stood and why you won't actually see it there in person.
Beyond that one story, Bonaventure's land carries real layered history of its own: Colonel John Mullryne first established Bonaventure Plantation here in 1762, planting the live oaks that still shade the grounds, before businessman Peter Wiltberger purchased the land in 1846 and had it laid out as a rural-style cemetery by designer James H. Rion in 1850. Its permanent residents include genuine Savannah figures like songwriter Johnny Mercer — four Academy Awards, co-founder of Capitol Records, and the lyricist behind "Moon River" — whose grave visitors still leave pennies and handwritten notes on, and Pulitzer-nominated poet Conrad Aiken.
Multiple independent sources — including the City of Savannah's own records and National Register of Historic Places documentation — put Bonaventure's actual footprint at somewhere between roughly 100 and 160 acres today, grown considerably from its original 70-acre start in 1846. Whatever the precise figure, it's genuinely more ground than a standard public walking tour can cover in an hour, which is the real reason a private, slower-paced visit reaches corners most visitors never see.
Every Voyzo tour is a starting point — tell us what you have in mind and we'll build it.
