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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 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.

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 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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

Destrehan Plantation is a former sugar and indigo plantation on the Mississippi in Destrehan, about 25 km west of New Orleans. Its manor house was built between 1787 and 1790 in the French colonial style. Tours tell of the families who owned it and of the enslaved people who worked the land, including the 1811 German Coast uprising.

The Key West Cemetery, laid out in 1847 after a hurricane washed out the earlier burial ground, covers 19 acres in the middle of Old Town. Because of the high water table many graves are above-ground vaults; there is a memorial to the sailors of USS Maine, and some headstones carry inscriptions in local humour.

Mallory Square is a waterfront plaza in Key West's Old Town, beside the cruise ship pier at the northern end of Duval Street. Every evening, starting about two hours before sunset, the Sunset Celebration fills it with street performers, craft stalls and food carts while people watch the sun go down over the Gulf of Mexico.

The Key West Shipwreck Treasure Museum on Mallory Square tells the story of the wreckers who salvaged ships on the Florida Keys reef. Set in a re-created 19th-century wrecker's warehouse, it combines actors, films and objects from the Isaac Allerton, which sank in 1856, and visitors can climb a 65-foot lookout tower.

The Key West Aquarium stands at 1 Whitehead Street on Mallory Square. Built by the Works Progress Administration between 1932 and 1934, it opened in 1935 as an open-air aquarium. It shows fish, sharks, rays and sea turtles of the Florida Keys, with a touch tank and guided feeding presentations through the day.

The Audubon House on Whitehead Street was built in the 1840s for harbour pilot and wrecker John Geiger, and is named after John James Audubon, who visited Key West in 1832 to draw local birds. The restored house shows 19th-century furniture and a collection of Audubon's first-edition bird prints, set in a tropical garden.

The Mel Fisher Maritime Museum at 200 Greene Street in Key West is a non-profit museum of shipwreck archaeology. It shows objects recovered from 17th-century wrecks such as the Spanish galleons Nuestra Señora de Atocha and Santa Margarita, and from the slave ship Henrietta Marie, and offers tours of its conservation lab.

Duval Street crosses Key West's Old Town for about 2 kilometres, from the Gulf of Mexico near Mallory Square to the Atlantic Ocean. Named after William Pope Duval, Florida's first territorial governor, it is lined with bars, restaurants, shops, galleries and 19th-century wooden houses, many in Bahamian and Victorian styles.

The Harry S. Truman Little White House in Key West's Truman Annex was built in 1890 as officers' quarters at the naval station. President Truman spent 175 days here over 11 working winter visits between 1946 and 1952. The house is shown on guided tours with its furnishings, including Truman's desk.

The Ernest Hemingway Home and Museum at 907 Whitehead Street in Key West is a stone house of 1851 where the writer lived with Pauline Pfeiffer from 1931 to 1939. Here he wrote works including To Have and Have Not. Rooms keep his furniture and writing studio, and dozens of cats, many of them six-toed, live in the garden.