Like Spanish moss on a live oak tree, history hangs thick in the streets of New Orleans. Settled by the French in 1718, the city was volleyed between Spanish and French control before 1803, when it was sold to the United States with the Louisiana Purchase. Since then, the Crescent City has kept the good times rolling. Stroll through “the birthplace of jazz,” and you might hear the sounds of Louis Armstrong’s trumpet intertwined with the pounding piano of Fats Domino. Icons have a way of living on in these storied neighborhoods—just ask the ghost hunters outside the tomb of voodoo priestess Marie Laveau.
Playwright Tennessee Williams purportedly once declared, “America has only three great cities: New York, San Francisco, and New Orleans. Everywhere else is Cleveland.” While much has changed since then, the Big Easy remains one of the world’s most celebrated destinations. The city keeps pushing forward in creative and progressive ways, drawing visitors far off the tourist path and into up-and-coming neighborhoods, but history and storytelling is where the city really shines: You can experience it in centuries-old restaurants and bars, in grand mansions that have been converted into buzzy boutique hotels, and in museums and parks dedicated to the history of jazz. From the French Quarter to the Garden District, the Marigny to Tremé, the city is filled with countless ways to “time travel” through its 300-plus years of rich history and cross-cultural mashups.
Preservation Hall is dedicated to preserving musical traditions in New Orleans.
Photo by zimmytws/Shutterstock
Listen to the music
New Orleans’s musical roots stretch back to the early 1800s, when enslaved people would gather in Congo Square on Sundays to drum and sing. By 1910, brass bands were marching through the streets in second-line parades, and the term “jass” was coined to describe the style of music that flourished in the red-light district.
For a taste of the city’s turn-of-the-19th-century rhythm, catch a show at Preservation Hall in the French Quarter. Established in 1961 to protect traditional New Orleans jazz, the venue transports visitors to the days when cats like Jelly Roll Morton and Buddy Bolden drew crowds. Inside, you’ll find yellowed peeling walls and rustic benches. A no-photography policy forces you to put away your phone and appreciate the legendary house band.
While in town, be sure to visit the free New Orleans Jazz National Historical Park, which celebrates its 30th anniversary on Halloween 2024 and offers ranger talks, art shows, drum circles, and live sets from local musicians as well as its house Arrowhead Jazz Band, which includes a few park rangers. If you want to dive even deeper into the city’s musical heritage, visit the New Orleans Jazz Museum, which occupies the Old U.S. Mint building near the meeting points of the French Quarter and Frenchmen Street, the city’s best thoroughfare for hearing live jazz, reggae, blues, and more, at all hours of the night.
Revelers dress in white for the annual St. John’s Eve festivities at the International House Hotel.
Courtesy of International House Hotel
Do the voodoo
Voodoo (or vodou) has been practiced in New Orleans since the early 1700s, but in the 1830s Marie Laveau turned it into a spectacle. She began hosting annual summer feasts on St. John’s Eve and topping them off with head-washing ceremonies (basically a voodoo baptism). The holy day became one of her legacies, and modern-day voodoo practitioners have continued the tradition.
For more than a quarter century, the International House Hotel has hosted a voodoo ritual to celebrate the summer solstice and the birth of John the Baptist, and it usually falls on or around June 24. Author, artist, speaker, and priestess Sallie Ann Glassman leads the events, and guests are encouraged to wear all white and bring an offering for Marie Laveau. For the occasion, the “spirit handlers” at the hotel’s Loa bar create a bottled elixir that incorporates medicinal herbs renowned for their healing powers, such as Spanish moss, jasmine, and sweet olive.
Go in search of New Orleans history on two wheels with FreeWheelin’ Bike Tours.
Photo by Zack Smith
Seek out the stories
The history of New Orleans is like a blockbuster movie complete with romance, tragedy, vampires, and pirates. To get a lay of the land, explore by bike with FreeWheelin’ Bike Tours’ “Creole & Crescent” tour on your first day. Covering seven and a half miles equivalent to about two to three hours of riding, it will give first-timers a chance to quickly check off the city’s most can’t-miss spots, such as St. Louis Cemetery No. 3, City Park, Louis Armstrong Park, and Congo Square.
Later, dig deeper into the city’s origins at the Historic New Orleans Collection, which occupies a collection of old buildings in the French Quarter. Exhibits this year include Unknown Sitters (through October 6), a collection of portraits of people whose identities remain a mystery, and Captive State: Louisiana and the Making of Mass Incarceration (July 19, 2024, to January 19, 2025), a hard-hitting exploration about the connections between enslavement and contemporary incarceration.
The historic stories continue at the New Orleans Museum of Art, which is currently showing an exhibit on Prohibition, resistance, and cocktail culture in the South (through January 5, 2025), and the New Orleans African American Museum, an introduction to the Tremé neighborhood; the museum’s website calls its architecturally rich streets “a gumbo of double shotgun houses, Creole cottages, and townhouses.”
The Henry Howard Hotel in the Garden District exudes old-school elegance.
Courtesy of Henry Howard Hotel
Sleep it off
The historic mansions of the Garden District have long attracted architecture lovers, but to truly appreciate these storied domiciles, you’ll have to sleep inside one. While the area boasts a few quaint inns, the Henry Howard Hotel gets top marks for style. The double-gallery, Greek Revival townhouse, designed in 1867 by famed architect Henry Howard, has been reimagined as an 18-room boutique hotel. Inside, custom wallpaper and second-line instruments decorate the walls; the lobby, which feels more like a living room, welcomes guests with soaring ceilings, vintage furniture, and Moscow mule cocktails.
The Henry Howard isn’t the only Garden District mansion turned boutique hotel: Other standouts include Hotel Saint Vincent, which was built in 1861 and restored in 2021; The Chloe, where the 19th-century digs have been modernized with curated vinyl and funky local art; and The Columns, an 1883 Italianate residence that later became a boarding house during World War I. Beyond just sleeping in the area, check out our recent neighborhood guide for tips on historic mansion tours and nearby restaurants that date back more than a century.
The Napoleon House is still waiting on a visit from the exiled emperor.
Courtesy of Napoleon House
Dine in historic digs
Somehow, it’s possible to eat your body weight in crawfish and beignets without gaining a pound in New Orleans—thank you, three-hour walking tours. Many of the city’s restaurants double as historical sites, such as Ralph’s on the Park, which occupies a building that was opened in 1860 as a coffeehouse and was later converted into a Gulf seafood restaurant in 2003 by restaurateur Ralph Brennan.
Sister restaurant Brennan’s is a French Quarter institution, originally opened in 1946. Bananas Foster was invented here in 1951, and the dessert is still flambéed to perfection today. Take note of the iconic pink building in which the restaurant is located: A man named Vincent Rillieux built it in 1795—and he just so happens to be the great-grandfather of French Impressionist painter Edgar Degas.
For lunch with a side of history, visit Napoleon House for a Pimm’s Cup and a classic muffuletta sandwich. The building’s first occupant was then Mayor Nicholas Girod, who offered the residence as a refuge to Napoleon in 1821. The exiled emperor never made it, and while the city rolls on around it, the landmark still stands waiting, as if frozen in time—right down to the 200-year-old walls, Beethoven soundtrack, and ghosts rumored to haunt the attic.
The Sazerac House opened in 2019, honoring the history of the official cocktail of New Orleans.
Photo by Wirestock Creators/Shutterstock
Grab a drink
Cocktail culture is wrapped up in the history of New Orleans, the birthplace of such classics as the sazerac, the hurricane, the Vieux Carré, and the Ramos gin fizz. To dive deep into the drinking history of the city, stop into Lafitte’s Blacksmith Shop Bar, which was built between 1722 and 1732 and is thought to be the oldest structure in the United States to be used as a bar. Far from the ornate buildings that surround it in the French Quarter, it’s a nondescript building where the signature drink is decidedly not historical: a grape-flavored slushy called the Voodoo Daiquiri, aka “Purple Drank.”
In 2019, the city welcomed The Sazerac House, a museum, bar, and distillery dedicated to the cocktail made with rye whiskey, Peychaud’s bitters, Herbsaint, and a sugar cube. During a visit, you can take a free 90-minute tour, join themed tastings, or shop for house-distilled spirits.
This article originally appeared in 2018; it was most recently updated on July 8, 2024, to include current information.
