The Quarter and Tremé on Foot
Fifteen stops from Congo Square to a bar that revolves, taking in the cemetery where Marie Laveau is buried, the mansion nobody wants to live in, and a pharmacy museum that will put you off the nineteenth century.
15 stops · on foot · Louisiana · 75 minutes of walking, end to end
See the whole route and everything odd beside it
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Every one of the 15 places in the index. Plan a route and the map narrows to what's actually near it.
Start outside the Quarter, in Tremé, because that is where the order of things actually runs.
Under the French and Spanish, enslaved people in New Orleans had Sundays. They gathered in the open ground north of the ramparts to trade, to dance, and to play drums — which was banned almost everywhere else in the American South. The rhythms that survived there are traceable through brass bands and jazz to most of what American popular music became.
That ground is Congo Square, and it is three streets from the bars on Bourbon that could not exist without it.
Two miles, flat, the whole thing on cracked pavement in heat.
Tremé
Outside St. Augustine Church is the Tomb of the Unknown Slave — a marine chain hung with shackles, set upright in a small garden, for the unnamed people buried in the surrounding ground without record. It is not large and it does not need to be.
The Backstreet Cultural Museum holds Mardi Gras Indian suits, social aid and pleasure club regalia, and jazz funeral material. The suits take a year to sew and are worn once. Nowhere else collects this.
St. Louis No. 1
New Orleans buries above ground, and the oldest surviving city cemetery is a packed grid of tombs on eight acres.
Public wandering ended in 2015 after persistent vandalism, so entry is by licensed tour or through the archdiocese. That includes the Glapion family tomb, the one long identified with Marie Laveau — the nineteenth-century Voodoo practitioner whose grave is among the most visited in the country, and which people kept marking with X's in the belief it brought a wish, which is why nobody may wander in unaccompanied any more.
Royal Street
The Historic Voodoo Museum is small, cluttered and has been running since 1972, which makes it older than most of the Quarter's attractions.
The LaLaurie Mansion is private and stays private. In 1834 a fire at the house exposed enslaved people held in conditions that caused a mob to gut the building, and Delphine LaLaurie fled the city. Everything since — and there is a great deal since, most of it invented — has been layered on top of that. Look from the pavement and do not disturb whoever lives there.
Lafitte's Blacksmith Shop is an eighteenth-century Creole cottage, one of the oldest structures in the Quarter, operating as a bar by candlelight. The pirate connection is unproven and the building is real.
Gallier House is the architect's own 1857 townhouse, built with indoor plumbing, ventilation and a cold-storage room when almost nothing had them.
Chartres and Jackson Square
The Pharmacy Museum occupies America's first licensed pharmacist's shop and displays what he sold. Leeches. Opium preparations. A fearsome case of surgical tools. It is the single best argument on this route for having been born later.
Muriel's is a working restaurant that keeps a séance lounge upstairs for Pierre Antoine Lepardi Jourdan, said to have shot himself after losing the building at cards.
The Presbytère was built as a courthouse and now holds the Louisiana State Museum's two permanent exhibits: Mardi Gras, and Hurricane Katrina. The second is one of the more serious disaster exhibitions anywhere, and putting it beside the costumes is a choice the museum made on purpose.
Three bars to finish
The Napoleon House is named for a plan that never happened — a scheme by the mayor to bring Bonaparte to New Orleans after St Helena, which foundered when Bonaparte died. It has been peeling artfully ever since.
The Old Absinthe House has poured drinks since the 1800s and accumulated stories about everyone from Jean Lafitte to Mark Twain.
And the Carousel Bar at the Monteleone genuinely revolves — the whole bar, one slow rotation every fifteen minutes, since 1949. It is the correct place to stop walking.
Practical
Two miles, flat, about seventy-five minutes of walking and a full day with the museums.
The cemetery needs booking ahead — licensed tour or archdiocese, not a walk-up. The Backstreet Cultural Museum keeps short hours and closes Mondays.
Do this in the morning or the evening. Midday between June and September is not a walking proposition, and the stretch from Congo Square through Tremé has almost no shade.
Congo Square, the Tomb of the Unknown Slave and the outside of the LaLaurie Mansion cost nothing. The last three stops cost whatever you drink.
The Route
Congo Square
New Orleans, Louisiana
Congo Square is historically associated with gatherings of enslaved and free people of African descent who played music, danced and traded on Sundays. The public space is foundational to histories of New Orleans music and African diasporic culture.
Tomb of the Unknown Slave
New Orleans, Louisiana
A small memorial outside St. Augustine Church honors unnamed enslaved people who died in New Orleans. The marker is a compact but powerful physical stop tied to the city's history of slavery and remembrance.
Backstreet Cultural Museum
New Orleans, Louisiana
Backstreet preserves Mardi Gras Indian suits, social aid and pleasure club material, jazz funeral traditions and neighborhood parade culture. The collection gives travelers a close look at traditions often seen only briefly in street processions.
St. Louis Cemetery No. 1
New Orleans, Louisiana
New Orleans' oldest surviving municipal cemetery is a dense landscape of above-ground tombs tied to some of the city's best-known historical and supernatural stories. Public entry is controlled through authorized tours, so do not expect unrestricted walk-in access.
Marie Laveau Tomb — St. Louis Cemetery No. 1
New Orleans, Louisiana
The Glapion family tomb is widely associated with Marie Laveau and has become one of the most visited graves in New Orleans. It lies inside St. Louis Cemetery No. 1, so access is only through the cemetery's authorized visitor system.
New Orleans Historic Voodoo Museum
New Orleans, Louisiana
A compact French Quarter museum devoted to New Orleans Voodoo history, ritual objects, altars, art and local traditions. It is one of the city's longest-running visitor sites focused specifically on Voodoo.
LaLaurie Mansion
New Orleans, Louisiana
The Royal Street mansion is tied to the notorious 1834 fire that exposed abuse of enslaved people in Delphine LaLaurie's household, later generating generations of ghost stories. It is private property; view only from the public sidewalk and do not disturb occupants.
Lafitte's Blacksmith Shop Bar
New Orleans, Louisiana
This eighteenth-century Creole cottage is wrapped in legends linking it to pirate and smuggler Jean Lafitte. The exact extent of Lafitte's connection is debated, but the surviving building is one of Bourbon Street's oldest and most atmospheric landmarks.
Gallier House
New Orleans, Louisiana
Architect James Gallier Jr. designed this 1857 townhouse with advanced-for-its-era indoor plumbing, ventilation and service spaces. Guided museum access reveals the technology hidden behind its formal French Quarter facade.
New Orleans Pharmacy Museum
New Orleans, Louisiana
Housed in an early nineteenth-century apothecary, the museum preserves antique medicines, surgical tools, patent remedies and pharmacy equipment. Its collection includes objects that show how strange and dangerous medicine could be before modern regulation.
Muriel's Jackson Square Séance Lounge
New Orleans, Louisiana
Muriel's embraces the building's ghost lore with a dedicated séance lounge and stories about former resident Pierre Antoine Lepardi Jourdan. It is an operating restaurant, so paranormal interest should remain secondary to normal guest access.
The Presbytère — Mardi Gras & Katrina Exhibits
New Orleans, Louisiana
The Louisiana State Museum uses the Presbytère for major exhibits on Mardi Gras and Hurricane Katrina. Costumes, parade objects and disaster-history material make this far stranger than a standard civic museum.
Napoleon House
New Orleans, Louisiana
The building takes its name from an unrealized plan to shelter Napoleon Bonaparte in New Orleans after his exile. Its weathered interior, classical music tradition and layers of political lore make it unusually intact French Quarter history.
Old Absinthe House
New Orleans, Louisiana
The Old Absinthe House has served drinks near Bourbon Street since the nineteenth century and accumulated stories involving pirates, politicians, writers and supposed secret meetings. Its surviving marble fountains and long bar history make it a classic New Orleans odd-history stop.
Carousel Bar & Lounge
New Orleans, Louisiana
The Hotel Monteleone's bar is built as a rotating carousel that slowly carries seated guests around its center. It has operated for decades and remains one of the city's best-known pieces of functioning novelty architecture.