🇺🇸 United States · Central and South
New Orleans is like no other city in the United States: it is a piece of Europe, Africa and the Caribbean planted on the banks of the Mississippi, with a soul of its own you can breathe on every corner. Here, in the French Quarter, the houses with wrought-iron balconies, the hidden courtyards and the cobbled streets evoke France and Spain; music floats in the air —because this is, no less, the birthplace of jazz—; and on the plates beats one of the tastiest and most singular cuisines in the country, Creole and Cajun cooking. It is a city for the senses, where partying, music and food are a way of life.
They call it 'The Big Easy' for its relaxed pace and its philosophy of 'laissez les bons temps rouler' ('let the good times roll'). It is the city of Mardi Gras, the country's most famous Carnival, with its parades, its floats and its colored bead necklaces; the city of jazz bands playing in the street, of live music clubs, of voodoo and legends, of the cemeteries with white tombs above ground (because the city is below sea level). A city cheerful and melancholy at once, resilient, which managed to recover even from the devastation of Hurricane Katrina.
This guide walks you through the essentials of New Orleans with a practical, warm eye: how to enjoy the French Quarter, where to hear the best live music, what to eat (from gumbo to beignets), how to tour the Garden District by streetcar, how to visit the cemeteries and the swamps, and how to let yourself be carried along by the city's unique rhythm. New Orleans makes its visitors fall in love: it is different, flavorful, musical and deeply human.
The region was inhabited by Native peoples when the French founded the city. New Orleans (La Nouvelle-Orléans) was founded in 1718 by the French Company of the Indies, under the direction of Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne de Bienville, in honor of the Duke of Orleans, regent of France. Its strategic position beside the Mississippi, close to the Gulf, made it a key port, though its swampy, flood-prone setting was always a challenge. In 1762-1763, France ceded Louisiana to Spain, which governed it for four decades (hence the strong Spanish architectural stamp of today's French Quarter, rebuilt after the fires of the late 18th century). In 1800 it briefly returned to France and, in 1803, Napoleon sold the whole immense territory of Louisiana to the United States (the 'Louisiana Purchase'). Under American rule, New Orleans prospered as a great port and as a unique multicultural society: French, Spanish, Creoles, enslaved and free Africans (the 'gens de couleur libres'), Acadians (Cajuns) and, later, immigrants from all over the world. From that extraordinary mixture came its Creole culture, Mardi Gras, Cajun-Creole cooking and, at the start of the 20th century, jazz. In 2005, Hurricane Katrina and the failure of the levees flooded much of the city in a historic catastrophe; New Orleans rebuilt itself with remarkable resilience. The full story is on our history page.
Read the full history ↓The most French state in the Union: a Creole and Cajun land of French, Spanish and African roots, cradle of the jazz born in New Orleans, of Mardi Gras, of the bayous and of the Mississippi delta.
Read the history of Louisiana →No exact prices: a scale from $ (budget) to $$$$$ (luxury), with 2-3 options per category.
Origins, formation and what the sources say.
New Orleans was born as a French colonial venture in the heart of the vast territory of Louisiana, which France claimed along the whole basin of the Mississippi River. In 1718, the French explorer and colonizer Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne, Sieur de Bienville, founded the settlement of La Nouvelle-Orléans on behalf of the French Company of the Indies. The name honored Philippe, Duke of Orleans, who was then serving as regent of France during the minority of King Louis XV.
The choice of site answered an impeccable strategic logic: it lay beside the Mississippi River, near its mouth on the Gulf of Mexico, at the point controlling access to the whole immense river basin of the continent's interior. Whoever held that spot would command the trade of half a continent. But the site also had a great drawback, one that would mark the city's entire history: it was low, swampy, flood-prone ground, hemmed in between the river and Lake Pontchartrain, with much of the land at or below water level. Taming that hostile geography would be a permanent challenge.
The first years were hard, marked by floods, tropical diseases and the difficulties of colonization. But the city was laid out on an orderly grid plan —today's French Quarter or Vieux Carré—, around a central square (the Place d'Armes, today Jackson Square) and a church. In 1722, New Orleans became the capital of French Louisiana, cementing its central role in the region.
The colonial history of New Orleans took an unexpected turn in the middle of the 18th century. After France's defeat in the Seven Years' War, and by means of secret treaties, France ceded Louisiana (including New Orleans) to Spain in 1762-1763. For some four decades, the city was governed by the Spanish Crown, a period that left a surprisingly deep mark on its appearance.
It turns out that the look of today's French Quarter —with its inner courtyards, its wrought-iron balconies, its roofs and its layout— is largely a Spanish inheritance, not a French one, despite its name. The reason is that during Spanish rule two great fires, in 1788 and 1794, destroyed most of the wooden colonial city of the French period. The rebuilding was done under Spanish rules and with fire-resistant techniques (brick, stucco, tiles), giving the quarter the Mediterranean-colonial style that characterizes it today and gives it so much charm.
Under Spanish administration, the city kept growing as a port and as an ever more diverse society. The peculiar Creole society of New Orleans developed, and a notable community prospered: the 'gens de couleur libres' (free people of color), people of African descent who enjoyed a degree of freedom and rights, and who played an important economic and cultural role, something distinctive of colonial Louisiana compared with other slaveholding regions of the South.
At the start of the 19th century, New Orleans changed flags once more, in what would be the decisive turn of its history. In 1800, by a secret treaty, Spain returned Louisiana to France, now under the power of Napoleon Bonaparte. But Napoleon, facing wars in Europe and after the failure of his plans in the Caribbean (the Haitian revolution), decided he could neither sustain nor defend that enormous and distant American territory.
And so, in 1803, Napoleon sold the whole of Louisiana to the young United States in the famous Louisiana Purchase. For a relatively modest sum, the United States acquired at a stroke an immense territory —taking in far more than the present state of Louisiana, stretching across much of the center of the continent—, practically doubling the size of the country. The formal transfer ceremony was held in the Cabildo, beside the Place d'Armes of New Orleans. It was one of the most momentous events in American history.
New Orleans then became American, but it kept its French, Spanish, Creole and Caribbean soul intact, which made it a unique city within the United States. The arrival of Anglo-Saxon Americans, who settled upriver (in what would become the Garden District), even created a tension and a coexistence between two worlds: the old Creole French Quarter and the new 'American' city. Its unmistakable personality would keep drawing on that mixture. In 1815, moreover, the city was the scene of the famous Battle of New Orleans, in which General Andrew Jackson (today the statue in the square) defeated the British.
What makes New Orleans truly unique is the extraordinary mixture of peoples that came together in it, a melting pot like few in the world. To the French and Spanish base were added the Creoles (descendants of Europeans born in the colony), enslaved Africans and free people of African descent, the Acadians (the 'Cajuns', French speakers expelled from Canada who settled in the region), Caribbeans (above all refugees from the Haitian revolution), the Irish, Germans, Italians and, later, people from all over the world. Out of that fusion came a language, a cuisine, a music and a culture all their own and impossible to repeat.
The most universal fruit of that blending was jazz. At the start of the 20th century, in the African American and Creole neighborhoods of New Orleans, the mix of African musical traditions, spirituals, the blues, brass band marches and the European inheritance gave rise to a new and revolutionary genre. Places such as the legendary Congo Square, where the enslaved gathered to play drums on Sundays, sowed the rhythmic roots. From here came Louis Armstrong, one of the most influential musicians in history, and jazz spread from New Orleans to conquer the whole world.
The city's other great cultural institution is Mardi Gras (Carnival), inherited from the French and Spanish Catholic tradition, which in New Orleans reached a spectacular scale. With its 'krewes' (Carnival societies), its float parades, its costumes, its music and its bead necklaces in purple, green and gold, Mardi Gras became the most famous Carnival in the United States and one of the city's great marks of identity. Together with Creole and Cajun cooking (gumbo, jambalaya), they form the heart of the unique culture of New Orleans.
The geographical vulnerability that had marked New Orleans since its founding —a city largely below sea level, protected by a system of levees— turned into tragedy on 29 August 2005, with Hurricane Katrina. The storm, one of the most devastating in United States history, struck the region, but the greater disaster was not caused directly by the wind but by the failure of the levee system protecting the city: when it gave way, the water flooded close to 80% of New Orleans, submerging whole neighborhoods under meters of water for days.
The catastrophe was immense: hundreds of thousands of people had to evacuate or were trapped, more than a thousand died, and entire neighborhoods were destroyed. The disaster also exposed deep social inequalities and failures in the authorities' response, and hit the poorest communities, mostly African American, especially hard. Many residents never returned, and the city lost a significant part of its population.
But New Orleans gave a remarkable display of resilience. In the following years, the city rebuilt itself: the levees were reinforced and redesigned, many of its residents returned, and the culture —the music, Mardi Gras, the cooking, the festive spirit— surged back, as an affirmation of the will to carry on. Tourism returned and the city recovered much of its vitality. Today New Orleans remains one of the most singular, culturally rich and best-loved cities in the United States: a place that, despite the wounds, keeps its music, its flavor and its philosophy of 'laissez les bons temps rouler' ('let the good times roll') intact.