Everything You Need to Do at the French Quarter in New Orleans

New Orleans’ French Quarter for First-Timers

Step into the French Quarter and boom. You’re swimming in a delicious gumbo of history, food, music, and cool buildings all in one spot. The oldest neighborhood in New Orleans is a place everyone needs to visit at least once in their life. Here’s everything you need to do when you finally make the trip.

The oldest neighborhood in New Orleans is a place everyone needs to visit at least once in their life. Here’s everything you need to do when you finally make the trip.

Check Out the Historic Buildings

You can DIY this using a map from the visitor center. Start at Jackson Square to gawk at St. Louis Cathedral’s three spires reaching for the heavens.

Wander down Royal Street to spot those fancy-pants balconies with ironwork that puts your home decor to shame.

Bourbon Street’s 1700s buildings are decked out with colorful shutters hiding secret courtyards, and they deserve a spot on your camera roll. Check out the Pontalba Buildings, aka the oldest apartments in America.

Watch Street Performers That’ll Make Your Soul Happy

Five-piece brass bands, jazz ensembles featuring musicians who’ve been playing longer than you’ve been alive, classically trained violinists, and tap dancers with portable floors set up shop at Royal and St. Peter Streets or the Moonwalk along the Mississippi.

Royal Street (closed to cars 11 AM-4 PM) attracts string quartets and jazz pianists who somehow wheel actual pianos to their spots.

Jackson Square gets the statue performers painted head-to-toe in metallic colors and acrobats who mix Quarter history into their flips and tricks. Crowds form faster than you can say ‘New Orleans,’ sometimes growing to 100+ people.

If you enjoy a performance, tips of $5-10 are greatly appreciated by artists who often make their entire living this way.

Eat ALL the Food You Can Find

The Quarter is New Orleans’ food heritage summed up in a few blocks. You’ll find 1840s-era restaurants with cypress-paneled dining rooms and casual cafés with iron tables.

Many spots offer balcony seating where you can enjoy street musicians while eating seafood gumbo with dark roux that took hours to perfect.

Order jambalaya stuffed with spicy sausage, crawfish étouffée that’ll make you weak at the knees. And don’t you dare say no to beignets buried under a snowstorm of powdered sugar.

If you’re nice, locals are more than happy to point you to spots off the tourist trail where prices magically drop and portions double in size.

Explore Jackson Square’s Non-Stop Action

Created in 1721 to copy a fancy Paris square, it’s still where everyone hangs out. Louis Cathedral (built 1720, got a makeover in 1850) rocks a bright white face and three 40-foot spires.

Pop inside between 9 AM and 4 PM to see the soaring ceiling, colorful windows, and hand-painted murals from the 1870s. The Cabildo and Presbytère museums stand next door, housing Louisiana Purchase artifacts and awesome Mardi Gras costume collections in Spanish colonial buildings from the 1790s.

Then, hang out in the square itself, where artists, fortune tellers who can see right through you, and brass bands that’ll blow your mind gather from sunrise till 10 PM.

Wander Through the French Market

The French Market stretches six blocks along Decatur Street from Jackson Square to Barracks Street, serving as the neighborhood’s shopping central since 1791.

Today it’s loaded with farmers selling local goodies, food vendors dishing up traditional yumminess, and over 100 craft stalls.

Score burlap sacks of filé powder and Cajun spice blends, handmade Mardi Gras masks starting at $25, and Louisiana strawberries (March-May) that taste nothing like the sad ones at the supermarket. Naturally, gobble up all the free samples you see.

Take a Ghost Tour That’s Genuinely Creepy

After sunset, ghost tours leave hourly from multiple locations on Toulouse Street with guides dressed in old-timey outfits leading you through gas-lit streets.

They’ll spill the tea about the 1809 fire that torched 856 buildings, creepy unsolved murders from the Axeman’s 1918-1919 killing spree, and ghost sightings that’ll make your hair stand up.

Famous haunts include the LaLaurie Mansion at 1140 Royal Street where Madame LaLaurie’s treatment of slaves shocked even other slave-owners, and Hotel Monteleone where elevators apparently stop for ghost passengers. These tours mix census records and police reports with local legends.

They last about two hours, cover a mile of walking, happen rain or shine, and your guide will even play EVP recordings from paranormal investigations in the buildings you visit.

Visit an Actual Pharmacy Museum

America’s first licensed pharmacy (1823) sits at 514 Chartres Street, now called the New Orleans Pharmacy Museum.

Check out surgical kits with actual bone saws, baby teething remedies loaded with cocaine (yikes!), and the original soda fountain where carbonated water met flavored syrups to mask medicine’s yucky taste.

The building itself is a Creole beauty with original cypress wood cabinets, a 1790s doctor’s study straight out of a time machine, and a courtyard garden growing foxglove, wormwood, and other plants still used in modern medicines.

Sip on a Sazerac

The French Quarter has been creating or making famous many classic drinks since the 1800s.

Order a Sazerac (America’s first cocktail, born at 437 Royal Street in 1838), a Ramos Gin Fizz that requires 12 minutes of arm-breaking shaking, or a Hurricane in the original Pat O’Brien’s where it was invented.

The Carousel Bar at Hotel Monteleone lets you drink on a slowly rotating 25-seat circular bar from 1949. Bartenders share juicy stories about Antoine Peychaud and his original ‘cocktail’ while setting orange peels on fire over your drink.

Remember to pace yourself and drink water because New Orleans heat and alcohol make a dangerous combo.

Listen to Real Jazz at Preservation Hall

No French Quarter visit is complete without hitting Preservation Hall at 726 St. Peter Street, a no-frills venue keeping traditional New Orleans jazz alive since 1961.

This place is wonderfully stuck in time. No fancy sound systems, no bar, no air conditioning. Just wooden benches and amazing acoustics in a tiny room. Musicians perform just three feet away from you, playing tunes they learned from jazz pioneers.