SAVANNAH ― The baristas of Gallery Espresso cafe field all sorts of questions from out-of-town customers. The gluten-free options among the Savannah historic district coffee shop’s baked goods. What time the ticket office of the stage show theater across Chippewa Square opens.

Then, there’s the most frequent: “Where’s Forrest Gump’s bench?”

Actor Tom Hanks narrated his character’s remarkable life story from a bus stop bench about 200 feet from Gallery Espresso’s front door in the 1994 film. “Forrest Gump” won 13 Oscars, including best picture, best director and best actor. It is arguably the most beloved movie ever shot in Savannah — a noteworthy honor considering the other classics filmed locally, such as “Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil,” “Glory,” and “The Legend of Bagger Vance.”

Several times a day, bewildered cinephiles wander into the coffee shop, order their java and ask what the baristas have labeled “the question.”

Gallery Espresso, a popular spot for tourists to ask baristas about the Forrest Gump bench, sits on the south end of Chippewa Square in the heart of downtown Savannah, Ga. (Sarah Peacock for the AJC)

There is neither a bench nor a bus stop on Chippewa’s northern edge as shown in the film. The seat and brick platform were props, installed for the movie and removed afterward. Plants now grow there, and there’s no signage explaining the bench’s absence or its post-Gump fate.

Even so, a cursory exam of “Gump” footage reveals the spot where Forrest sampled from his box of chocolates while waiting on the No. 9 bus. Sit nearby for just a few minutes and you’ll spot curious tourists searching for the bench, some even tromping through the vegetation as if the earth had opened and swallowed the bus stop.

The north end of Savannah's Chippewa Square, where the Forrest Gump bench prop stood. (Sarah Peacock for the AJC)

The activity hints at why the location is unmarked: safety. The bench was positioned at the nexus of a busy intersection designed for horse-and-carriage traffic in the early 1800s. The best photo angle calls for photographers to stand in the middle of the street.

“We don’t want folks getting run over,” Mayor Van Johnson said.

They go for coffee instead — and find the answer to the “Where’s the bench?” question.

Gump’s bench is on display at a Savannah museum three blocks west of Chippewa Square. It’s “without a doubt the most popular artifact” in the Savannah History Museum, said curator Catherine Duffy. She likens the bench to Dorothy’s ruby slippers from “The Wizard of Oz,” the centerpiece of the Smithsonian’s American History Museum collection.

The bench from the movie “Forrest Gump” inside the Savannah History Museum in downtown Savannah, Ga. (Sarah Peacock for the AJC)

The display features the bench on a raised platform backed by ficus trees. It is surrounded by a waist-high fence, meant to discourage museum visitors from sitting on, damaging or otherwise defiling the bench. Some brazen visitors ignore the obstacle.

“Those ficus trees,” Duffy said, “have seen some stuff.”

The Savannah History Museum’s bench is made of fiberglass and measures 14 feet long. It is one of about half a dozen built for “Forrest Gump” and is one of those used in filming. Paramount Pictures, the film studio behind “Forrest Gump,” donated the bench to the city at the production’s end. Another “Gump” bench is part of Paramount’s backlot tour in Hollywood.

An icon of Savannah, the “Bird Girl” statue made famous by “Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil” now stands inside a gallery at the Jepson Center for the Arts in Savannah. (Contributed by Blake Guthrie)

Gump’s bench isn’t the only iconic Savannah movie prop that has changed locations. The “Bird Girl” statue, immortalized on the cover of the 1994 book “Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil” and later in the film adaptation, no longer stands in Bonaventure Cemetery and is instead on display at the Telfair Museums.

The bronze sculpture adorned the Trosdal family plot at Bonaventure for a half-century but was removed following the film’s release in 1997. Tourists and photo seekers flocked to the cemetery to see it, disturbing the graves. The family lent it to the Telfair that same year.

A Gallery Espresso tip jar leans into "Forrest Gump." (Sarah Peacock for the AJC)

The Telfair sits two squares away from the Gump bench site but doesn’t generate the same interest with Gallery Espresso customers.

Of late, the baristas have leaned into their shop’s proximity to Hollywood fame by decorating the service counter tip jars with screen shots from “Forrest Gump,” including one of the bench captioned “A box of chocolates does go well with … COFFEE at Gallery Espresso.”