Known for
Jazz, Creole and Cajun cooking, and a Carnival season
Must-see landmarks
Jackson Square, St Louis Cathedral and the National WWII Museum
Best time to visit
March to May and October to November, outside the hottest months
Free to visit
City Park's 1,300 acres, including the free Besthoff Sculpture Garden
The National WWII Museum, Bourbon Street and St Louis Cathedral are the tourist attractions in New Orleans most visitors come for. The 7-stop itinerary below strings them together, followed by 8 more sights, free things to do, upcoming events and visitor FAQs.
Opened in 2000 as The National D-Day Museum on the invasion's 56th anniversary, it became America's National WWII Museum in 2003, built here because local firm Higgins Industries made the Normandy landing craft. Six pavilions hold the galleries; extras like a 4D film cost separately. Bourbon Street lies northeast, beyond the Warehouse District.
Laid out in 1721 by French engineers and named for the ruling Bourbon dynasty, not the drink, the street's dense strip of bars and balconies fills up after dark, while a citywide rule lets a drink travel outside in a plastic cup rather than glass. St Louis Cathedral and Jackson Square are a few minutes' walk east.
The three-spired cathedral overlooking Jackson Square is open to visitors daily from 9:30 to 16:00, last entry 15:45, free to step inside outside of Mass times and private events such as weddings. It remains the seat of the Archdiocese of New Orleans. Jackson Square opens up right in front of it.
The site where Louisiana passed from France to the United States on 20 December 1803, and a National Historic Landmark since 1960, this free public square keeps its wrought-iron fence lined with local painters selling work on the spot. Cafe du Monde is a couple of minutes east on Decatur Street.
The original coffee stand has served chicory coffee and square, powdered-sugar beignets from this spot in the French Market since 1862, open 7:15 to 23:00 Sunday to Thursday and until midnight on Friday and Saturday, closing only for Christmas and severe hurricanes. The rest of the French Market continues a short walk north.
Spanish colonial authorities put up the city's first market hall near here in 1782, and the market has run on this stretch of riverfront ever since, reorganised under the French Market Corporation in 1932. Today it mixes a farmers market, a flea market and food stalls. Woldenberg Park and the river are a short walk east.
Mayor Maurice 'Moon' Landrieu opened the wooden Moon Walk promenade in the mid-1970s, the first stretch of riverfront returned to pedestrians after decades of wharves blocked it off, and Woldenberg Park extended the green space upriver in 1990. Both are free, with benches facing the Mississippi's ship traffic, a fitting spot to close out the day.
Bitch Cabal feat. Mannequin Pussy & Wednesday plays Civic Theatre on 10 November at 19:00.
John Cameron Mitchell: Hedwig 25th Anniversary Movie Tour plays The Fillmore New Orleans on 11 November at 18:00.
Laughs & Drafts at Nola Brewery comes to New Orleans Lager & Ale (Nola) Brewing on 11 November at 19:00.
New Orleans Pelicans vs. Brooklyn Nets comes to Smoothie King Center on 11 November at 19:00.
Jokes on Oak comes to Oak St Brewery on 14 November at 20:00.
Candlelight: Tribute to Michael Jackson comes to Hotel Peter and Paul on 17 December at 18:00.
City Park spans 1,300 acres, one of the largest urban parks in the country by its own count, and costs nothing to walk; inside it, the Besthoff Sculpture Garden is free too, while Carousel Gardens' rides and the Botanical Garden charge their own admission.
The historic square in front of St Louis Cathedral is free to enter at any hour, and so is browsing the paintings local artists hang along its iron fence; only their finished pieces, and the horse-drawn carriages that queue nearby, cost anything.
Stepping inside the cathedral that anchors the French Quarter costs nothing between 9:30 and 16:00 daily; it closes to sightseers during Mass and private events such as weddings, when only worshippers or guests can go in.
The riverfront path running past the French Quarter, made up of the 1970s Moon Walk and Woldenberg Park added in 1990, is free to walk at any hour, with benches facing the tugboats and freighters working the Mississippi.
Magazine Street itself costs nothing to walk end to end; what sits inside its storefronts is what costs money, and an afternoon spent browsing shopfronts and popping into a free gallery opening needs no ticket at all.
The Treme park that preserves Congo Square, where enslaved New Orleanians gathered on Sundays to sing and drum in a tradition tied to the roots of jazz, is free to enter daily from 8:00 to 18:00, later during daylight saving time.
Uptown's Audubon Park, separate from the paid Audubon Zoo next door, rings a free 1.8 mile path beneath live oaks and around a lagoon, open to walkers, joggers and cyclists at no charge.
New Orleans grew up as a French and Spanish colonial port before joining the United States with the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, and that mixed heritage still shows in the ironwork balconies of the French Quarter and the Creole cooking served across the city. The National Park Service, which runs its own Jazz National Historical Park here, says jazz is most often associated with this city, and the music stays alive nightly from Frenchmen Street to Bourbon Street, building each winter toward Mardi Gras.
The French Quarter, or Vieux Carre, is the city's original core, thirteen blocks along the river from Canal Street to Esplanade Avenue, with a quieter Lower Quarter beyond Jackson Square drawing fewer crowds than Bourbon Street's Upper Quarter. Downriver, the Faubourg Marigny keeps a more local feel around Frenchmen Street, built up as a music strip mostly in the 1980s. Uptown and the Garden District, reached along St Charles Avenue, hold nineteenth century mansions, while the Warehouse District has turned old cotton warehouses into museums, including the National WWII Museum.
Spring, from March to May, and autumn bring the mildest weather and the busiest festival calendar, while summer turns hot and humid and falls within the Atlantic hurricane season that runs from June through November, with most direct hits historically striking in late July, August and September. Three to four days cover the French Quarter, a streetcar ride out to the Garden District and at least one museum at an easy pace.
The French Quarter and the riverfront are entirely walkable, and the St Charles Avenue streetcar, running since 1835, carries visitors out to the Garden District and Uptown. Louis Armstrong International Airport sits a short drive west of downtown, reachable by rideshare, taxi, airport shuttle or public bus. Creole and Cajun kitchens belong to Louisiana and jazz started here, two of the reasons to visit the tourist attractions in the United States that exist nowhere else in it.