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The staff here are intimately tied to the city’s music scene and can direct you to any number of concerts and events where the best of New Orleans music will be showcased. This small branch office of the National Park System may seem a little underwhelming at first blush, but stop in and talk with a ranger and you’ll understand why this is one of the cultural cornerstones of the Quarter. Jean Lafitte National Historic Park (French Quarter Visitor Center) (419 Decatur Street) But the times when du Monde is relatively slow (we like visiting late at night or early in the morning – don’t forget, it’s open 24 hours) are something like magic – it’s you, the city, some good coffee and a pastry dusted in enough sugar to fund several dentists’ offices. It’s tough to do this when you’re standing in line with 40 other people.
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The whole point of sipping a cafe au lait and snacking on a beignet is to slow down, open your eyes and take in the street scene of New Orleans in a state of relaxed contemplation. We’ll be brutally honest here – sometimes, when you hit Cafe du Monde during the busy part of the day (which can vary, although there’s almost always a crowd on weekends), it can be a bit too much. If a powerful official was going to meet with a wanted pirate, they probably wouldn’t do so on a pedestrian alley that ran alongside the city’s then largest church.īeignets from Cafe du Monde by Peter Burka For what it’s worth, the legends that Andrew Jackson met pirate Jean Lafitte here for a clandestine pow-wow are probably that – myths. This little street (it’s only 600 feet long), backed by historical buildings and packed with unique businesses like Faulkner House Books, embodies a certain element of French Quarter identity: an unreplicable hybrid of architectural preservation and idiosyncratic eccentricity. This thin thoroughfare almost feels like an urban afterthought given the scale of some of the other streets in the French Quarter, but walking down Pirates Alley – which takes but a few minutes – is a quintessential French Quarter stroll. Each floor gives insight into the past via exhibits on the different ethnic groups that have inhabited the state, the local history of colonization and Francophone identity, and the legacy of slavery and Civil Rights.
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Once a seat of local government and judiciary, today the building is managed by the state museum of Louisiana. If you want an introduction to that history – indeed, to the story of Louisiana itself – make sure to drop into the Cabildo. New Orleans fairly drips with history, more so than almost any other American city (alright, we see you Boston, Philadelphia and St Augustine). The Cabildo in Jackson Square courtesy of Louisiana State Museum on Facebook St Louis Cathedral, the oldest cathedral in the country, is the dominant landmark on the Square. Besides their handsome appearance, the top floors of the Pontalba Buildings house supposedly the oldest rented apartments in the USA (the ground floors are given over to shops). The Square is hemmed in on either end by the Pontalba Buildings, one-block long four-story brick buildings built in the late 1840s. There’s a crackling energy here, which manifests amidst street artists, friendly fortune tellers, and busking brass bands. If New Orleans has a town square, Jackson Square – dominated by St Louis Cathedral and an eponymous statue of Andrew Jackson – is it. Here are some can’t miss destinations for those exploring the Quarter for the first time. During her long history, New Orleans has been administered by the French, the Spanish, the French (again!), and the USA. Although this is the ‘French’ Quarter – and is also known as the Vieux Carre (‘Old Square’) – much of the historical architecture here is Spanish in origin. This neighborhood was the original city of New Orleans, a literal walled city founded by the French so they could command commerce coming up and down the Mississippi River. Welcome to New Orleans – and the French Quarter.