Explore New Orleans

The New Orleans Museum of Art, founded in 1911 as the Delgado Museum, is the city's oldest fine-arts museum and stands in City Park. Its collection of about 40,000 works ranges from European painting and Japanese art to photography, glass and art from Africa and the Americas. Beside it lies the Besthoff Sculpture Garden.

St. Louis Cemetery No. 1, opened in 1789 just outside the French Quarter, is the oldest surviving cemetery in New Orleans. Its above-ground tombs and family vaults, many of them whitewashed brick, line narrow paths; the voodoo practitioner Marie Laveau is believed to be buried here. Visitors enter only on a guided tour licensed by the Archdiocese.

Bourbon Street runs for thirteen blocks through the French Quarter, from Canal Street to Esplanade Avenue, and was laid out in 1721. Its upper blocks are lined with bars, jazz and blues clubs and restaurants under cast-iron balconies; the lower end is quieter and residential. Parts of it are closed to traffic in the evening.

Preservation Hall is a small jazz venue on St. Peter Street in the French Quarter, founded in 1961 to keep traditional New Orleans jazz alive. Short acoustic sets by the house band and guest musicians are played several times a night in a plain, worn room where most of the audience sits on benches or stands.

The Hermann-Grima House is a Federal-style brick mansion on St. Louis Street in the French Quarter, built in 1831 for the merchant Samuel Hermann. Guided tours show the furnished rooms, the courtyard garden, the stable and the open-hearth kitchen, and tell of the family and of the enslaved people who worked in the house.

The Court of Two Sisters is a restaurant on Royal Street in the French Quarter, named after two sisters who ran a notions shop in the building in the late 19th century. Guests eat Creole dishes in a large walled courtyard shaded by trees, and a jazz trio plays during the daily brunch.

The Old Ursuline Convent on Chartres Street was completed in 1752 for Ursuline nuns who came from France in 1727 to run a school and a hospital. It is among the oldest buildings in the Mississippi valley. A museum shows the nuns' history and the convent rooms, next to St. Mary's Church and a formal garden.

St. Louis Cathedral is the seat of the Catholic Archdiocese of New Orleans, facing Jackson Square in the French Quarter. A church has stood on the site since 1718; the present building dates from 1794 and was largely rebuilt in 1850, giving it its three spires. Inside are painted ceilings and stained-glass windows.

The Cabildo on Jackson Square was built in 1795-1799 as the seat of the Spanish colonial city council. The formal transfer of the Louisiana Purchase took place here in 1803. Today it is part of the Louisiana State Museum, with exhibitions on the history of Louisiana from colonial times to Reconstruction.

Jackson Square is the historic square at the heart of the French Quarter, laid out as the Place d'Armes in the early 18th century. The transfer of Louisiana to the United States was proclaimed here in 1803. A statue of Andrew Jackson stands in its garden, framed by St. Louis Cathedral, the Cabildo, the Presbytere and the Pontalba Buildings.

The New Orleans Jazz Museum occupies the Old U.S. Mint at the corner of Esplanade Avenue and Decatur Street, a Greek Revival building of 1835 that struck coins until 1909. Part of the Louisiana State Museum, it shows instruments, recordings and photographs from the history of jazz, and its performance hall hosts concerts.

City Park is a public park of about 530 hectares in Mid-City New Orleans, larger than Central Park in New York. It holds one of the largest groves of mature live oaks in the world, lagoons, the New Orleans Botanical Garden, the Besthoff Sculpture Garden, the New Orleans Museum of Art and a small amusement park.

Audubon Aquarium stands on the Mississippi riverfront at the foot of Canal Street, at the edge of the French Quarter. Opened in 1990 as the Aquarium of the Americas, it reopened in 2023 after a renovation that also brought in the Audubon Insectarium. Its tanks show a Caribbean reef, the Gulf of Mexico and the Amazon.

The Ogden Museum of Southern Art in the Warehouse District is devoted to the art of the American South, from the 18th century to today. Founded in 1999 around the collection of Roger Ogden, it shows painting, photography, sculpture and crafts in a modern hall linked to the 1889 Howard Memorial Library, designed after H. H. Richardson.

The National WWII Museum in New Orleans' Warehouse District tells the story of the American experience in the Second World War. It opened in 2000 as the National D-Day Museum and was named the country's official WWII museum by Congress in 2003. Its pavilions hold aircraft, vehicles, oral histories and a submarine experience.

Audubon Zoo lies in Audubon Park in Uptown New Orleans, between Magazine Street and the Mississippi. Run by the Audubon Nature Institute, it covers about 23 hectares and keeps some 2,000 animals. Its Louisiana Swamp area shows alligators and other wildlife of the state's wetlands in a recreated Cajun setting.