Things to Do in New-Orleans - Top Attractions, Hidden Gems & Must-See Sights

Bourbon Street runs twelve blocks from Canal Street to Esplanade Avenue through the French Quarter, and it is exactly as loud and messy as you've heard. Neon signs, open-door bars, frozen daiquiri machines, and crowds spilling into the street at all hours. This is the top thing to do in New Orleans for many first-time visitors, and love it or hate it, you should walk it at least once. The street is open 24/7 and free to walk. New Orleans has open-container laws that let you carry your drink outside, which is why Bourbon Street functions the way it does. The blocks between Canal and St. Ann are the tourist epicenter: Hand Grenades, Huge Ass Beers, karaoke bars. Past St. Ann, the crowd shifts and the bars get more local. It's a completely different energy depending on which block you're on. Here's the honest truth: if you spend your entire trip on Bourbon Street, you'll miss what makes this city special. Frenchmen Street, just past Esplanade Avenue, is where locals go for live music. The food on Bourbon is mostly mediocre. But the spectacle of the street itself, especially during Mardi Gras, is something no other American city can replicate.

The French Quarter is where New Orleans began. Founded in 1718, this is the oldest neighborhood in the city, and it looks the part. Wrought-iron balconies drip over narrow streets, live jazz drifts out of open doors, and the smell of pralines and po'boys hangs in the air. Despite the name, most of the architecture is actually Spanish colonial, built after fires in the 1780s destroyed the original French structures. The entire district is a National Historic Landmark. Walking the Quarter is free and open around the clock. Royal Street is the refined sibling: antique shops, galleries, and street musicians playing real jazz. Bourbon Street, which runs parallel one block over, is the rowdy one. Jackson Square, St. Louis Cathedral, and Cafe du Monde are all within a few blocks of each other here, so you can hit the major must-see spots in New Orleans in a single morning. The grid is compact and flat, making it easy on foot. The Quarter survived Hurricane Katrina in 2005 with relatively little flood damage thanks to its higher elevation near the Mississippi River levees. That resilience is part of its character. This neighborhood has been rebuilt after fires, plagues, and storms for over 300 years, and it still feels more alive than most places ever manage to.

If Bourbon Street is the tourist trap, Frenchmen Street is the real thing. Located in the Faubourg Marigny neighborhood just past Esplanade Avenue, this three-block stretch has been the center of New Orleans live music since the 1980s. The Spotted Cat, Snug Harbor, Blue Nile, the Maison, Apple Barrel: on any given night, you can walk from club to club and hear brass bands, Dixieland jazz, funk, and blues pouring out of every doorway. Most venues have no cover charge, or a nominal one under $10. The street comes alive after 9 PM and stays that way until well past midnight. There's also a small art market that sets up on weekend evenings near the corner of Chartres Street. The walk from Jackson Square to Frenchmen takes about 10 minutes, straight down Decatur and across Esplanade. This is the single best thing to do in New Orleans if you care about music. The difference between Frenchmen and Bourbon is simple: on Frenchmen, people are there to listen. The musicians are top-tier, the drinks are reasonably priced, and the crowd is a mix of locals and tourists who know where to go. Skip the tourist clubs and come here instead.

Jackson Square is the geographic and emotional center of the French Quarter. This is where Louisiana became United States territory in 1803 after the Louisiana Purchase, and where Andrew Jackson's equestrian statue has stood since the 1850s. The square was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1960, and the American Planning Association named it one of America's Great Public Spaces in 2012. The square is open daily from 8 AM to 6 PM and free to enter. On any given day you'll find tarot card readers, portrait artists, and street performers lining the iron fence. St. Louis Cathedral rises directly behind the statue, flanked by the Cabildo and the Presbytere. Cafe du Monde sits just steps away on Decatur Street. This cluster of landmarks is the single most concentrated spot for sightseeing in New Orleans. Mornings here are the quietest. By midday the artists and musicians are in full swing, and by late afternoon the light hits the cathedral facade in a way that makes every phone camera come out. If you only have a few hours in the city, start here. Everything else in the Quarter is within a 10-minute walk.

St. Louis Cathedral faces Jackson Square and the Mississippi River, and it is the oldest cathedral in continuous use in the United States. The first church on this site was built in 1718, the same year New Orleans was founded. That one burned. The replacement burned too, in the great fire of 1788. The current structure dates to 1789 under Spanish rule, though it was heavily expanded and rebuilt in the 1850s. It was raised to cathedral rank in 1793. Admission is free. The cathedral is open Monday through Saturday from 9:30 AM to 4 PM, and Sundays from 9 AM. The interior is smaller than you might expect from the grand facade, with painted ceilings and stained glass that feel distinctly European. It sits between two other important buildings: the Cabildo (where the Louisiana Purchase was signed) and the Presbytere, both now Louisiana State Museum properties. Three centuries of fire, plague, hurricanes, and cultural upheaval, and this church has been rebuilt every time. Step inside for 15 minutes. It costs nothing, and the quiet is a welcome contrast to the noise of Bourbon Street two blocks away.

New Orleans buries its dead above ground. The city's high water table makes traditional graves impractical, so the tombs here look like small stone houses arranged along narrow pathways. St. Louis Cemetery No. 1, opened in 1789, is the oldest existing cemetery in the city and a must-see in New Orleans for anyone interested in the culture of death and memory that runs deep here. The cemetery is open daily from 9 AM to 4 PM. You can only enter with a licensed tour guide, a rule put in place after years of vandalism and the defacing of tombs believed (incorrectly) to be the grave of Voodoo Queen Marie Laveau. Tours typically run about $25 and last 45 minutes to an hour. The cemetery is a short walk from the French Quarter, just past Rampart Street near Armstrong Park. The above-ground tombs are a distinctly New Orleans phenomenon that surprises most visitors. Some are elaborately decorated, others crumbling. The Society of St. Louis No. 1 maintains many of the oldest structures. It's a small space, easy to see in under an hour, and it puts the rest of the city's relationship with tradition and ritual into sharper focus.

Audubon Park spreads across 350 acres in Uptown New Orleans, directly across St. Charles Avenue from Tulane and Loyola universities. The city bought this land in 1871, and it's been a public park ever since. Massive live oaks line the main paths, some with branches that arch completely over the walkways. A 1.8-mile paved loop circles the park and fills with joggers and dog walkers every morning. The park is free and open daily from 5 AM to 10 PM. The St. Charles streetcar stops right at the park entrance, making it one of the more scenic rides in the city. Audubon Zoo occupies the riverside section of the park (separate admission, $30). The lagoons attract herons and egrets year-round. On the river side, there's a path along the levee with views of cargo ships heading down the Mississippi. Compared to City Park's sprawling size and cultural institutions, Audubon Park feels more like a neighborhood green space, which is exactly its appeal. This is where Uptown families come on Saturday mornings. The parks in New Orleans each have a different personality, and Audubon's is relaxed and quietly beautiful. Combine it with the zoo or a walk down Magazine Street, which runs along the park's edge.

Audubon Zoo occupies 58 acres within Audubon Park in Uptown New Orleans and is home to over 2,000 animals. The Louisiana Swamp exhibit is the standout: a recreation of a Cajun swamp with alligators, nutria, raccoons, and native birds that feels like stepping into the bayou without leaving the city. Other highlights include the Elephant Yard, the Jaguar Jungle, and a lazy river-style splash area for kids. Admission is $30 for adults. The zoo is open daily from 10 AM to 5 PM. You can reach it by the St. Charles streetcar (get off at the Audubon Park stop and walk through the park) or by the Magazine Street bus. Plan on 2 to 3 hours. The paths are shaded by old oaks, which makes it more bearable in summer than you'd expect, though a New Orleans July is still a New Orleans July. Is it worth it if you're not traveling with kids? The Louisiana Swamp exhibit alone makes a good case, since it's one of the few places to visit in New Orleans where you can see the bayou ecosystem up close without booking a swamp tour. The rest of the zoo is solid but not exceptional. Families will easily fill a half-day here, especially if you pair it with a walk through Audubon Park afterward.

Brennan's is a Creole institution on Royal Street in the French Quarter, and it practically invented the New Orleans power brunch. This is the restaurant that created Bananas Foster in 1951, flambeing bananas tableside with rum and banana liqueur over vanilla ice cream. Brunch here is not cheap, and it is not quick. Plan on spending $75 to $100 per person and at least two hours. The restaurant is open Monday through Friday from 9 AM and weekends from 8 AM, closing at 10 PM. The pink building on Royal Street is hard to miss. Inside, the courtyard with its fountain and banana trees is a quieter contrast to the bustle of the French Quarter outside. The egg dishes are rich, the turtle soup is a classic, and the wine list leans French and generous. It's been operating since 1946, survived Katrina, and reopened after a full restoration in 2014. If you're going to splurge on one meal in the Quarter, this is a strong candidate, though Commander's Palace Uptown gives it serious competition for best Creole dining in the city.

City Park is enormous. At 1,300 acres, it is one of the largest urban parks in the United States, bigger than Central Park in New York. It's located in Mid-City, reachable by the Canal Street streetcar line, and it contains the New Orleans Museum of Art, a botanical garden, a sculpture garden, the Carousel Gardens amusement park (with an antique carousel from around 1910), and the oldest grove of live oak trees in the world. Some of these oaks are over 800 years old. The park is free to enter and open daily from 5 AM to 10 PM. The individual attractions inside have their own hours and fees. NOMA charges $15, the Botanical Garden and Carousel Gardens have separate admissions. You could spend an entire day here and not cover everything, which makes it a good option when you need a break from the intensity of the French Quarter. As a place to visit in New Orleans, City Park is often overlooked by tourists who never leave the Quarter. That's a mistake. The Besthoff Sculpture Garden alone, with over 90 works spread across lagoons and oak groves, is free and worth the trip. Rent a kayak on Big Lake, ride the Carousel, or just sit under a live oak and watch the Spanish moss sway. This park is where New Orleans breathes.

The New Orleans Jazz Museum sits inside the Old U.S. Mint building at 400 Esplanade Avenue, right where the French Quarter meets the Faubourg Marigny. The building itself is worth a look: it's the only structure in the U.S. to have served as both a U.S. and a Confederate mint. Inside, the museum traces the evolution of jazz from its roots in Congo Square through brass bands, Dixieland, and modern interpretations. Admission is $10, and the museum is open Tuesday through Sunday from 9 AM to 4 PM (closed Mondays). The collection includes Louis Armstrong's first cornet, original sheet music, and rotating exhibits on specific jazz traditions. Live performances happen regularly in the third-floor performance hall. For $10, it's a solid use of an hour or two, especially if you're heading to Frenchmen Street later that evening and want some context for what you'll hear. Among the best museums in New Orleans for understanding the city's identity, the Jazz Museum does a good job connecting the music to the people and neighborhoods that created it. It's not a huge museum, so don't expect to spend half a day here. But pairing it with a walk through Treme and Armstrong Park nearby gives you a fuller picture of where this music came from.

Algiers Point is the only neighborhood on the West Bank of the Mississippi that most visitors will ever see, and it takes exactly one free ferry ride to get there. The Canal Street-Algiers Ferry departs every 30 minutes from the foot of Canal Street, and the crossing takes about 7 minutes. From the ferry deck, you get one of the best views of the New Orleans skyline, the French Quarter waterfront, and St. Louis Cathedral rising above the rooftops. Once you step off, Algiers Point feels like a small Southern town. Quiet residential streets with Victorian and Creole cottages, a few bars, a handful of restaurants, and almost no tourists. The neighborhood is on the National Register of Historic Places and predates much of what sits across the river. A 45-minute walk covers the main streets easily. This is one of the hidden gems in New Orleans that rewards the curious. The ferry ride alone is worth it for the views, and the neighborhood has a slow, unhurried feel that's hard to find in the Quarter. On a hot afternoon, sit on the levee with a cold drink and watch the cargo ships pass at impossibly close range. Then take the ferry back and you're steps from the French Quarter again.

Bywater sits just downriver from the Marigny and Frenchmen Street, and it has become the creative heart of New Orleans over the past two decades. After Hurricane Katrina in 2005, artists and musicians moved here for cheap rent and proximity to the Quarter. The neighborhood survived the storm without flooding thanks to its higher elevation near the Mississippi. The colorful shotgun houses, murals, and small galleries give every block a different personality. The neighborhood is part of the Ninth Ward and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Walking around is free, and the best way to experience it is simply to wander. Crescent Park runs along the river here, giving you a waterfront walk that connects back to the Marigny. The Bywater is also home to Bacchanal Wine, a wine shop and bar with a courtyard that turns into a live music venue most nights. During Mardi Gras, the Society of Saint Anne krewe starts its march right here in Bywater on Mardi Gras morning, collecting costumed locals as it winds through to the French Quarter. It's one of the best secret spots in New Orleans for experiencing Mardi Gras the way locals do: on foot, in costume, with no corporate floats in sight.

JAMNOLA stands for Joy, Art, Music, New Orleans, and it's an interactive art installation in the Marigny neighborhood. The experience walks you through a series of rooms designed by local artists, each one themed around a different aspect of New Orleans culture: music, food, Mardi Gras, and community. It's colorful, immersive, and built for photos, though it goes deeper than the average selfie museum. Tickets cost $30 and timed entry keeps crowds manageable. The museum is open Thursday through Monday (closed Tuesday and Wednesday), with hours from 10 AM to 6 PM and extended to 8 PM on Fridays and Saturdays. Plan on about 60 to 90 minutes inside. It's a short walk from Frenchmen Street, making it easy to pair with a night of live music. Whether JAMNOLA is worth $30 depends on what you're looking for. If you want a quick, visually striking thing to do in New Orleans that's different from the usual historic sites, it delivers. The local artist involvement gives it more substance than similar pop-up installations in other cities. But if you're the type who'd rather spend that $30 on a meal at a neighborhood restaurant, that's a perfectly reasonable choice too. It's best for couples and small groups.

Magazine Street runs six miles along the river from the Central Business District through the Garden District, Uptown, and out to Audubon Park. Named after an 18th-century ammunition magazine that stood nearby, the street is now lined with locally owned shops, galleries, restaurants, and coffee houses. It's the antithesis of Bourbon Street: quiet, walkable, and full of things you can't find anywhere else. The street is free to explore at any hour. The best stretch for shopping and eating runs from roughly Jackson Avenue to Nashville Avenue, about 2 miles. You can take the Magazine Street bus (Route 11) from Canal Street if you don't feel like walking the whole thing. Vintage clothing stores, furniture shops, bookstores, and neighborhood restaurants fill old shotgun houses and converted storefronts. This is one of the true hidden gems in New Orleans. Most tourists never leave the French Quarter, which means Magazine Street stays local. Stop at a snowball stand (the New Orleans version of a snow cone, made with finely shaved ice and homemade syrups), browse the antique shops, and eat a roast beef po'boy at a corner counter. The Garden District mansions are just a few blocks inland, making it easy to combine the two in an afternoon.

The Historic New Orleans Collection occupies several historic buildings on Royal Street in the French Quarter, including the 1792 Merieult House. Established in 1966, this museum and research center holds over 350,000 photographs, prints, drawings, and artifacts documenting the history of New Orleans and the Gulf South. Most of the exhibitions are free to visit. The museum is open Tuesday through Saturday from 9:30 AM to 4:30 PM and Sundays from 10:30 AM. Guided tours of the Williams Residence, the founders' personal house museum, cost extra but give you an intimate look at how wealthy French Quarter residents lived. The research center on Chartres Street is open to anyone with an interest in primary sources, from colonial maps to Mardi Gras ephemera. For a free museum in the middle of the French Quarter, the HNOC is remarkably good. The rotating exhibitions are thoughtfully curated, covering everything from the Battle of New Orleans to the evolution of Creole cuisine to post-Katrina recovery. It is among the best museums in New Orleans for understanding how this city became what it is. Because it's free, there's no risk in popping in for 30 minutes while walking Royal Street between Jackson Square and Canal.

The New Orleans African American Museum sits in Treme, the oldest surviving Black neighborhood in the United States. The museum occupies a Creole cottage that dates to the early 1800s, and its exhibitions trace the contributions of people of African descent to New Orleans, from the era of slavery through free people of color, Reconstruction, civil rights, and contemporary culture. Admission is $10. The museum is open Thursday through Sunday from 11 AM to 4 PM. It's a small museum, and you can see the current exhibitions in about an hour. Treme itself, just blocks from the French Quarter across Rampart Street, is worth walking through. Congo Square in nearby Armstrong Park is where enslaved people gathered on Sundays to play music and dance, a tradition widely regarded as a birthplace of jazz. Among the best museums in New Orleans for understanding the city's African American heritage, the NOAAM fills a gap that larger institutions often skip. The personal scale of the museum, housed in a historic home rather than a grand building, feels appropriate to the stories it tells. Pair it with a walk through Treme and Armstrong Park for a morning that covers ground most tourists never see.

NOMA, as locals call it, is the oldest fine arts museum in New Orleans, established in 1911 as the Delgado Museum of Art. It sits inside City Park, reachable by the Canal Street streetcar to the end of the line. The permanent collection spans 5,000 years, with particular strengths in French and American art, glass, and photography. The building itself is a Beaux-Arts structure fronted by columns and an oak-lined approach. Admission is $15 for adults. The museum is closed Mondays, open Tuesday and Thursday through Sunday from 10 AM to 5 PM, and stays open until 7 PM on Wednesdays. Adjacent to the museum is the Sydney and Walda Besthoff Sculpture Garden, which is free and open daily. The garden alone, with over 90 sculptures set among lagoons, moss-draped oaks, and walking paths, is reason enough to make the trip. Is NOMA worth it? The collection is strong but not overwhelming. You can see the highlights in about 90 minutes. The real draw is combining it with the free sculpture garden and a walk through City Park, turning it into a half-day outside the French Quarter. Among the best museums in New Orleans, NOMA offers the most complete art experience when paired with its surroundings.

The Ogden Museum holds the largest collection of Southern art in the world. Established in 1999 in the Warehouse District, it covers everything from self-taught folk art to contemporary painting and photography, all by artists from or connected to the American South. The collection spans from the 18th century to present day and includes work that is raw, political, funny, and deeply rooted in place. Admission is $10, and the museum is open daily from 10 AM to 5 PM. It's located on Camp Street, a few blocks from the National WWII Museum, making it easy to pair the two in a single day in the Warehouse District. The building combines a restored 1889 Howard Memorial Library with a modern addition, and the contrast works well. What makes the Ogden stand apart from other best museums in New Orleans is its focus. Instead of trying to cover everything, it goes deep on one region. The folk art and outsider art galleries are the most memorable rooms. On Thursday evenings, the museum hosts "Ogden After Hours" with live music, drinks, and late access to the galleries. It's a popular local event and a nice alternative to the usual bar scene. If you care about understanding the creative culture of the South beyond just music, this is the place.

The French Market stretches along several blocks of Decatur Street and North Peters Street in the French Quarter, making it one of the oldest public markets in the United States. It has operated in some form since 1791, when the site was used by Native Americans for trading long before the French arrived. Today it's a mix of open-air vendor stalls, covered market halls, and a flea market. The market is open daily from 10 AM to 6 PM and free to walk through. The flea market section is the liveliest part, with vendors selling everything from handmade jewelry and hot sauce to secondhand records and local artwork. The food stalls lean heavily toward New Orleans staples: gumbo, jambalaya, po'boys, pralines, and freshly squeezed lemonade. Cafe du Monde sits at one end of the market, and Jackson Square is a 3-minute walk away. As food markets in New Orleans go, the French Market is the most tourist-oriented. Prices are a little higher, and some of the flea market goods are generic. But the location is unbeatable, and the prepared food stalls let you try several New Orleans dishes in one sitting without committing to a full restaurant meal. It's a good first stop to get your bearings and your first taste of the city.

St. Roch Market is a food hall in the St. Roch neighborhood, about a 15-minute walk from Frenchmen Street. The building dates to 1875, originally constructed after a yellow fever epidemic devastated the neighborhood (the name comes from Saint Roch, patron saint of incurable diseases). It served as a traditional market for over a century before Hurricane Katrina flooded it in 2005. After sitting vacant for nearly a decade, it reopened in 2015 as a modern food hall with multiple vendors. The market is open daily, with hours from 7 AM to 9 PM on weekdays and until 10 PM on Fridays and Saturdays. Inside, you'll find vendors selling oysters, poke bowls, craft cocktails, coffee, Vietnamese-Creole fusion, and classic New Orleans plates. Expect to spend $12 to $20 per person for a meal. The atmosphere is bright and airy, with high ceilings and communal tables. For where to eat in New Orleans outside the French Quarter, St. Roch Market is a great option. It's less touristy than the French Market, the food quality is higher, and the multi-vendor setup lets everyone in your group order something different. The neighborhood itself is worth exploring, with street art and shotgun houses lining the surrounding blocks.

Louis Armstrong Park sits at the edge of the French Quarter, just across Rampart Street in the Treme neighborhood. The park is named for the jazz legend born a few blocks away in 1901. The main gate, a large iron arch, opens onto 32 acres of green space that includes Congo Square, the Mahalia Jackson Theater for the Performing Arts, and a statue of Armstrong himself with his trumpet. The park is free and open daily from 8 AM to 6 PM. Congo Square, inside the park, is arguably the most historically significant piece of ground in American music. During the 18th and 19th centuries, enslaved people gathered here on Sundays to play drums, sing, and dance. These gatherings are widely considered a direct ancestor of jazz, blues, and gospel. A circle of stones marks the spot today. The parks in New Orleans each tell a different story, and Armstrong Park's story is the most important one. The park itself is modest in size and amenities compared to City Park or Audubon, but what happened on this ground shaped American culture. Combine it with the nearby New Orleans African American Museum in Treme and the Jazz Museum on Esplanade Avenue for a morning that connects the dots between the history and the music you'll hear that night on Frenchmen Street.

Woldenberg Park runs along the Mississippi River waterfront in the upper French Quarter, stretching from Canal Street and the Aquarium of the Americas downriver to the Moon Walk across from Jackson Square. The park opened in 1989 on land that had been occupied by wharves and warehouses. Now it's a green, open stretch of riverfront with walking paths, sculptures, and unobstructed views of the Mississippi. The park is free and open daily from 6 AM to 10 PM (midnight on Fridays and Saturdays). Several public art installations dot the grounds, including the New Orleans Holocaust Memorial Sculpture by Yaacov Agam (installed 1995) and the Monument to the Immigrant by Franco Alessandrini. During the French Quarter Festival in April, the park fills with stages and food vendors. For the best views in New Orleans of the Mississippi River and the working waterfront, Woldenberg Park is the most accessible spot. You can watch tugboats push barges, cruise ships dock, and the Algiers Ferry cross back and forth. The Moon Walk at the downriver end connects directly to Jackson Square and Cafe du Monde. It's a natural pause point between sightseeing stops in the Quarter, and on a breezy evening, the riverfront benches are some of the most pleasant seats in the city.