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📍 New Orleans French Quarter · United States
📍 New Orleans French Quarter · United States
🏛 French Quarter & Bourbon St
New Orleans is America's most singular city — a place so distinct in its food, music, architecture, and cultural identity that it sometimes seems to belong to a different country entirely. Founded by the French, ruled by the Spanish, briefly held by Napoleon, and shaped profoundly by the African diaspora, the Caribbean, and American jazz and blues traditions, New Orleans has absorbed every influence into something entirely its own.
The French Quarter (Vieux Carré) is the oldest urban neighbourhood in the USA — 13 city blocks of Spanish Colonial and French Creole architecture with the iconic wrought-iron galleries that line Bourbon and Royal Streets. The jazz and blues clubs of Frenchmen Street (one block from the Quarter in the Marigny neighbourhood) are where New Orleans musicians actually play and where visitors get the most authentic experience — Frenchmen Street on a Thursday to Saturday night is one of the great live music experiences in the world. The Preservation Hall Jazz Band, playing traditional New Orleans jazz in a building that has barely changed since the 1960s, is an essential stop.
New Orleans food is one of America's greatest regional cuisines. Commander's Palace, in the Garden District, is one of the USA's most celebrated restaurants and has trained legendary chefs including Emeril Lagasse and Paul Prudhomme. But the city's best eating is often simpler: a cup of Community Coffee with beignets at Café du Monde on Jackson Square at 2am; a roast beef po'boy from Domilise's; a bowl of red beans and rice on a Monday (the traditional New Orleans wash day meal, still served at restaurants citywide); charbroiled oysters from Drago's or Acme Oyster House.
Mardi Gras — the carnival celebration running from January Epiphany through Fat Tuesday (Mardi Gras Day) — is the world's greatest free street party. The parades, with their enormous floats and throws of beads, cups, and doubloons, run for two weeks across the city. Book accommodation a year ahead for the final week before Fat Tuesday. The bayou swamp tours from Honey Island or Cajun Encounters show the wetland wilderness — ancient cypress forests, alligators, and roseate spoonbills — that surrounds the city.
Food and music lovers who want America's most singular city, Mardi Gras festival-goers, jazz history enthusiasts, and anyone building a Gulf Coast cultural itinerary.
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