31 Best Sights in New Orleans, Louisiana

This well-preserved town house and courtyard provide rare public access beyond the storefronts to the interior of the exclusive Pontalba Buildings. The rooms are furnished in the style of the mid-19th century, when the buildings were designed as upscale residences and retail spaces. Notice the ornate ironwork on the balconies of the apartments; the original owner, Baroness Micaela Pontalba, popularized cast (or molded) iron with these buildings, and it eventually replaced much of the old handwrought ironwork in the French Quarter. The initials for her families, A and P (Almonester and Pontalba), are worked into the design. A gift shop and bookstore run by the Friends of the Cabildo is downstairs. The Friends also offer informative two-hour walking tours of the French Quarter ($22) from this location Tuesday through Sunday at 10:30 am and 1:30 pm that include admission to the house.

This stately 19th-century mansion was briefly home to Confederate general and Louisiana native P.G.T. Beauregard, but a longer-term resident was the novelist Frances Parkinson Keyes, who found the place in a sad state when she arrived in the 1940s. Keyes restored the home—today filled with period furnishings—and her studio at the back of the large courtyard remains intact, complete with family photos, original manuscripts, and her doll, fan, and teapot collections. Keyes wrote 40 novels there, all in longhand, among them local favorite Dinner at Antoine's. Even if you don't have time for a tour, take a peek at the beautiful walled garden through the gates at the corner of Chartres and Ursulines Streets. Landscaped in the same sun pattern as Jackson Square, it blooms year-round. The house was used most recently as the interior for the Fairplay Saloon in the TV series Interview with the Vampire. Tours (45 minutes) begin on the hour.

Though Anne Rice moved out of her elegant Garden District home in 2004, the famous novelist's fans still flock to see the house that inspired the Mayfair Manor in her series Lives of the Mayfair Witches. The house is a three-bay Greek Revival, extended over a luxurious, lemon tree–lined side yard and surrounded by a fence of cast-iron rosettes that earned the estate its historical name, Rosegate.

The only Gothic Revival house in the district was built in 1849. Garden District Americans shunned the Gothic Revival style, deeming it a little too close to Creole-Catholic tradition, but Londoner Charles Briggs ignored decorum and had James Gallier Sr. design this anomaly, touted as a "Gothic cottage." The interior departs from a strict Gothic layout to make it better suited for entertaining. A miniature replica of the structure stands next door; it once housed Briggs's servants, who were reputedly free men of color.

This mansion, completed in 1904 for cotton magnate William Perry Brown, is one of the largest houses on St. Charles Avenue. Its solid monumental look, Syrian arches, and steep gables make it a choice example of Romanesque Revival style.

This 1856 home was built by cotton king Henry S. Buckner in overt competition with the famous Stanton Hall in Natchez, built by Buckner's former partner. Among the luxurious details are its 48 fluted cypress columns and a rare honeysuckle-design cast-iron fence. Now privately owned, the house served as the campus of Soulé College from 1923 to 1975 and appeared in American Horror Story.

The renowned local architect Thomas Sully designed this 1896 Colonial Revival house after the Longfellow House in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The interior has often appeared in the pages of design magazines. It was built for John Castles, president of Hibernia National Bank.

Built in 1859, this house's stylistic influence was due to the two-story galleries of its dining room wing, which had railings made of cast iron. The fence features a pattern of morning glories and cornstalks and is the most famous work of cast iron in the Garden District. Colonel Robert Short, a cotton merchant from Kentucky, purchased the fence for his wife, who was homesick for her native Iowa. The house was occupied by Union governor Michael Hahn and by governor Nathaniel Banks during the Civil War, but after the war ended, it was returned to Colonel Short.

In 1905, Paul Doullut was inspired to build a home that resembled the great steamboats of the Mississippi, where he spent his time as a riverboat captain. In 1913, he built a similar home for his son, down the street at 503 Egania. Towering over the Mighty Mississippi and the rest of the neighborhood with wraparound verandas fitted with guardrails and high-perched widow's walks, these houses are architectural oddities specific to their environment. Because the first floors are constructed of ceramic tile, the Doullut houses are uniquely equipped to withstand flooding, and both survived Hurricane Katrina with little damage. Today these are private residences that can only be toured from the outside, but walking along the industrial canal levee from the St. Claude bridge toward Holy Cross is a great way to get a bird's-eye view.

The Impressionist Edgar Degas, whose Creole mother and grandmother were born in New Orleans, stayed with his cousins in this house during an 1872 visit to New Orleans, producing 18 paintings and four drawings while here. "This is a new style of painting," Degas wrote in one of the five known letters he sent from New Orleans, explaining that the breakthrough he experienced here led to "better art." Today, this house museum and bed-and-breakfast offers public tours, given by Degas's great-grandnieces, which include the screening of an award-winning film on Degas's family and their sojourn in New Orleans, plus a walk through the historic neighborhood focusing on details from the artist's letters. In 2019, the site was designated as a French monument by the French ambassador to the United States. Feel free to drop by for a look if you're in the vicinity, but check the website or call ahead for event dates or to make an appointment for a full tour.

When music legend Fats Domino passed away in 2017, a city-wide second-line parade culminated at his former home in the Lower Ninth Ward: a black-and-yellow shotgun house emblazoned with the letters "F D", a bright reminder of the artist's dedication to the neighborhood. Blocks from where he was raised, Domino built this two-house compound in 1960, at the height of his musical career, and kept it as his homebase throughout decades on tour. While he spent his later years across the river in Harvey, Louisiana, it was in this house where Fats endured Katrina, and was later rescued by the Coast Guard (and visited by President G.W. Bush) after losing almost everything he owned. It remains an important neighborhood landmark.

The young novelist William Faulkner lived and wrote his first book, Soldiers' Pay, here in the 1920s. He later returned to his native Oxford, Mississippi, where his explorations of southern consciousness earned him the Nobel Prize for literature. The house is not open for tours, but the ground-floor apartment Faulkner inhabited is now a bookstore, Faulkner House Books, which specializes in local and southern writers. The house is also home to the Pirate's Alley Faulkner Society literary group, which hosts an annual literary festival celebrating the writer's birthday.

Irish-born James Gallier Jr. was one of the city's most famous 19th-century architects; he died in 1866, when a hurricane sank the paddle-steamer on which he was a passenger. This house, where he lived with his family, was built in 1857 and contains an excellent collection of early Victorian furnishings. During the holiday season, the entire house is filled with Christmas decorations. If you have watched the new TV series Interview with the Vampire, you may recognize the house as that belonging to Lestat de Lioncourt.

The cherubs featured in the effusive ironwork on this distinctive house stops people in the street. Built in 1856, this mansion and its service buildings were once the estate of businessman John Gauche, who lived there until 1882. Although the privately owned house is not open to the public, its exterior still merits a visit to snap a few photos.

Noted architect William Brand built this Georgian-style house in 1831, and it's one of the largest and best-preserved examples of American architecture in the Vieux Carré. The house offers the Urban Enslavement Tour, which gives a comprehensive look at life for those enslaved in urban settings, and the contributions enslaved Africans and their descendants made to the city of New Orleans. The popular tour runs on the hour, and advance reservations are recommended. Cooking demonstrations on the open hearth of the Creole kitchen are held twice monthly on Saturday from November through April. You'll want to check out the gift shop, which has many local crafts and books.

This restored antebellum home was built in two periods: its present-day second floor was actually constructed first, in 1850, and in 1884 the house was elevated and a new first floor added. The extensive dollhouse collection includes 60 historically accurate, scale-model miniatures of Victorian, Tudor, and plantation-style houses and covers more than 3,000 square feet on the mansion's second floor. All were created by owner Bonnie Broel over a 15-year period. Visitors can only view the property on tours, which can fill up, so it's best to call ahead.

Jazz enthusiasts would do well to follow Frenchmen Street beyond the borders of the Marigny to pay homage to Jelly Roll Morton at the pianist and composer's modest former home, now a private residence with nary a plaque to suggest its importance. The current residents, however, have put a photo of the musician in the window. Morton was a "Creole of color" (free African American of mixed race), a clear distinction in those days—Morton himself always described his roots as "French." The neighborhood has declined some since Morton's days, so plan for a daytime walk-by.

This complex of lovely town houses, built in the 1830s by sugar planter Jean Baptiste LaBranche, fills the half block between Pirate's Alley and Royal and St. Peter streets behind the Cabildo. The house on the corner of Royal and St. Peter streets, with its elaborate, rounded cast-iron balconies, is among the most frequently photographed residences in the French Quarter.

Locals (or at least local tour guides) say this is the most haunted house in a generally haunted neighborhood. Most blame the spooks on Madame LaLaurie, a wealthy but torture-loving 19th-century socialite who fell out with society when, during a fire, neighbors who rushed into the house found mutilated slaves in one of the apartments. Madame LaLaurie fled town that night, but there have been stories of hauntings ever since. The home is a private residence, not open to the public. Actor Nicolas Cage bought the property in 2007; two years later, the house sold at a foreclosure auction. The house and Madame LaLaurie herself have gained infamy in recent years thanks to the television show American Horror Story: Coven, which features them both extensively.

Architect Benjamin Henry Latrobe, who designed the U.S. Capitol, built this modest house with Arsene Latour in 1814. Its smooth lines and porticoes started a passion for Greek Revival architecture in Louisiana, as later evinced in many plantation houses upriver as well as in a significant number of buildings in New Orleans. Latrobe would die in New Orleans six years later from yellow fever. This house, believed to be the earliest example of Greek Revival in the city, is not open to the public.

As a 16-year-old immigrant working in the New Orleans shipyards, Henry Lonsdale noticed how many damaged goods were arriving from upriver. Spotting a need for more-protective shipping materials, he developed the burlap sack and made a fortune, only to lose it all in the 1837 depression. Lonsdale turned to coffee importing, and in order to stretch his supply, he thought to cut the coffee grounds with chicory, a bitter root—and New Orleanians have been drinking the blend ever since. This house includes intricate cast-iron work and a carved marble entrance hall. The statue of Our Mother of Perpetual Help in the front yard is a remnant of the house's more than 70 years as an active Catholic chapel.

Also called the "Jockey's Mansion," this massive, three-story Italianate mansion is a neighborhood landmark (and now a popular setting for Hollywood film crews). Designed by the prominent New Orleans architect James Gallier Jr., it was built in 1865 for Florence A. Luling, whose family had made a fortune selling turpentine to Union soldiers when they occupied New Orleans during the Civil War. When the Louisiana Jockey Club took over the Creole Race Course (now the Fair Grounds) in 1871, they purchased the mansion and used it as a clubhouse for the next 20-odd years. It is not open to the public.

The widow Amélie Miltenberger built this row of three picturesque brick town houses in the 1830s for her three sons. Her daughter Alice Heine became famous for wedding Prince Albert of Monaco. Although the marriage ended childless and in divorce, Princess Alice was a sensation in New Orleans.

This Italianate house was built by impressionist Edgar Degas's maternal uncle, Michel Musson—a rare Creole inhabitant of the predominantly American Garden District. Musson had moved to his Esplanade Street residence before Degas visited New Orleans, so it's unlikely the artist ever stayed at this address. A subsequent owner added the famous "lace" iron galleries.

One of the few surviving houses that lined the bayou in the late 1700s, and the only Creole colonial–style country house in the city open to the public, Pitot House is named for James Pitot, who bought the property in 1810 as a country home for his family. In addition to being one of the city's most prosperous merchants, Pitot served as New Orleans mayor from 1804 to 1805, the city's first after the Louisiana Purchase, and later as parish court judge. The Pitot House was restored and moved 200 feet to its current location in the 1960s, and is noteworthy for its stuccoed brick-and-post construction, an example of which is exposed on the second floor. The house is typical of the West Indies style brought to Louisiana by early colonists, with galleries around the house that protect the interior from both rain and sunshine. The house is furnished with period antiques from the United States, including special pieces from Louisiana.

Baroness Micaela Pontalba built this twin set of town houses, one on each side of Jackson Square, around 1850; they are known for their ornate cast-iron balcony railings. Baroness Pontalba's father was Don Almonester, who sponsored the rebuilding of the St. Louis Cathedral in 1788. The strong-willed Miss Almonester also helped fund the landscaping of the square and the erection of the Andrew Jackson statue at its center. The Pontalba Buildings are publicly owned; the side to the right of the cathedral, on St. Ann Street, is owned by the state, and the other side, on St. Peter Street, by the city. On the state-owned side is the 1850 House, and at 540--B St. Peter Street on the city-owned side is a plaque marking the apartment of Sherwood Anderson, writer and mentor to William Faulkner.

Built in 1859 and styled after an Italian villa, this home is one of the largest in the district. Doric and Corinthian columns support its rounded galleries. It is believed to be the first house in New Orleans with "waterworks," as indoor plumbing was called then.

This was the family home of local architect Thomas Sully, who designed it in 1886. The Queen Anne--style home uses mixed surfaces, including cypress shingles and bricks, on the exterior. Sully was known for his use of deep shades of color and varied textures.

Dating to the 1830s, this Greek Revival cottage sits amid a plantationlike garden, surrounded by a copy of the original white-picket fence. Businessman Thomas Toby moved to New Orleans and had the house raised aboveground to protect it from flooding.

Built in 1869, this stately Italianate mansion served as the German consulate in the early 20th century, until the start of World War II. The house has been meticulously maintained and furnished with period pieces, and is now mainly a venue for private receptions and special events. Highlights include a carved-oak staircase and mantelpiece and 24-karat gilt moldings and sconces.