Natchez Dresses for December

Natchez has been receiving guests on its bluff above the Mississippi since 1716, which makes it older than New Orleans and, as the town has noted for three hundred years, considerably higher and drier. The cotton fortunes of the eighteen hundreds left it with more antebellum houses than any town in America, and the local custom of opening them to visitors is nearly a century old itself. December is when the tradition dresses up, with the great houses decorated and candlelit, the weather finally cool, and the town at its most hospitable. Everything below assumes two nights.

The distinctive move here is sleeping in the history, since a number of the great houses and townhouses in the historic district operate as inns, four-poster beds, galleries, camellias in the garden and all. The district puts everything within a walk or a short drive, and December weekends around the holiday tours book well ahead. Rates across town remain gentle by the standards of cities with half its architecture.

The house tours are the founding attraction, begun by the town's garden clubs in the nineteen thirties, and the December version adds the greenery, the candlelight, and the occasional costumed hostess. Two or three houses in a day is the correct dose, chosen for variety, one grand, one intimate, one unfinished, since the town's most haunting mansion famously stopped mid-construction when the war came and stands under its dome unfinished still. The stories in these rooms include the enslaved people whose labor built them, and the better tours now say so plainly, which has made the tours worth more.

The bluff walk along the top of the river is the town's front porch, a long green promenade with the Mississippi doing its slow work below, and sunset there is the daily event. Down the hill, Natchez Under-the-Hill is the surviving strip of what was once the rowdiest landing on the river, now a short row of bars and porches at water level where the correct order is a drink with a view of the current. The historic district in between rewards aimless walking, block after block of galleries and iron fences.

The town eats like the Deep South with river advantages, fried chicken and greens, tamales by way of the Delta, biscuits taken seriously, and a handful of dining rooms in the old houses doing the white-tablecloth version. December evenings fill with holiday parties, so book dinner ahead on weekends. Lunch counters and porches handle the daytime, unhurried, as is local law.

Fly into the regional airports or make the drive up the Natchez Trace Parkway from the south, the old forest road that is an attraction in itself and the correct arrival if time allows. Check the holiday tour schedules before fixing dates, book house-tour tickets and dinner together, and give the bluff at least one sunset and one morning.

On the last evening, take the walk along the bluff after the houses go dark. The river below has carried everything this town ever was, and it is still going by.