The best New Orleans attractions

While Bourbon Street can be avoided (unless it’s your first visit to New Orleans - you have to experience it), the French Quarter is always a must-do, any time of year. As the city’s oldest neighborhood, the Vieux Carre is packed with gorgeous architecture, loads of history, a wealth of food and music, and a cast of characters, including long-time residents, chatty tour guides, and talented street performers. Be sure to take in the views of the Mississippi from the edge of the Quarter.

The National WWII Museum is a world-class complex with award-winning exhibits showcasing the stories of those who served in WWII and on the homefront. Highlights include planes, jeeps, and Higgins Boats, a theater with WWII-era musical performances, a restaurant, and a fantastic gift shop with 1940s-inspired gifts and clothing.

The heart of the French Quarter is an attraction in and of itself: here, find the St. Louis Cathedral looking out toward the Mississippi River, facing Jackson Square, and the statue devoted to Andrew Jackson, the hero (along with pirate Jean Lafitte) of the 1815 Battle of New Orleans. The square is always alive with energy, from street musicians filling the air with tunes to artists and others hawking their wares. The oldest continuously operated Catholic church in America is beautiful inside and out.

The city's preeminent art museum sits within City Park, at the edge of the Big Lake. NOMA houses more than 40,000 pieces featuring pieces from the Italian Renaissance to modern works. Browse works from Monet, Degas, Rodin, and O’Keefe, as well as glass, ceramics, pre-Columbian art, and an extensive photography collection. Save time for the adjacent Sydney and Walda Bestoff Sculpture Garden, a beautifully-landscaped showcase of the sculpture collection.

Blaine Kern has been building Mardi Gras floats for the various krewes (social groups) that roll through parades in the weeks leading up to and on Mardi Gras Day (Fat Tuesday). He's known as "Mr. Mardi Gras" for a good reason, as his designs have delighted the city for over 50 years. Once across the river in Algiers, now the store is near the Convention Center and offers tours that take you into the real heart of the Mardi Gras parade experience.

How much do you know about Louisiana voodoo? How about gris-gris, zombies, amulets and charms, and everything else relating to this religion brought to the city the enslaved and influenced by Catholicism? At the New Orleans Historic Voodoo Museum, all your questions are answered with exhibits and cultural insights that include the influence of voodoo queen Marie Laveau on the city in the 1800s. Make your way to the downstairs dungeon for some suitably creepy experiences.

Explore a different side of the South at New Orleans' newest museum. The Museum of the Southern Jewish Experience (MSJE) tells the unique story of Jews in thirteen Southern states from Colonial times to the present. Learn how Jewish people in the South came to be influenced by the culture of their new communities and how they shared their own culture with these communities (primarily Christian) through heritage and traditions.

The colorful history of the African American experience in New Orleans is chronicled at the Backstreet Cultural Museum, with a particular emphasis on "the community-based masking and processional traditions." Expect elaborately constructed Mardi Gras costumes, memorabilia of the numerous Social Aid and Pleasure Clubs found in different neighborhoods around the city, photographs and historical records of jazz funerals and second lines, plus much more.

The Bywater is the city’s vibrating center of art, as reflected in the incredible murals that dot the neighborhood. Start at Studio Be on Royal Street, where artist Brandon "BMike" Odums leads the charge, creating breathtaking murals with emotional subjects. Find many more beautiful works painted on buildings along St. Claude Avenue and peppered throughout this burgeoning arts district. 

The Historic New Orleans Collection is a museum, research center, and publisher dedicated to the study and preservation of the history and culture of New Orleans and the Gulf South region. Through guided tours and free exhibitions spanning several buildings and a historic house museum, dive into the past and present of the city, from historical traditions to modern artistic expressions. Located in the French Quarter, HNOC is a perfect complement to your adventures in the Vieux Carre.

New Orleans’ streetcar system has been rolling since 1835. While you can no longer ride the Desire line made famous by Tennessee Williams, the existing lines offer a great way to see the city. The newer red streetcars run out to Mid-City, while the older, original green cars take you down historic St. Charles Avenue, past beautiful houses in the famed Garden District and Audubon Park.

No trip to New Orleans is complete without a walk through one of the city's mausoleum-filled above-ground cemeteries. St. Louis Cemetery #1 rests on the northern edge of the French Quarter at Ramparts Street and is the oldest in NOLA, while Cemetery #2 is another few blocks north. Both are resting places of Catholic residents with fascinating life stories, so book a guide if you're interested in more than a simple walk through the massive edifices.

New Orleans was the epicenter of Mississippi River steamboat travel and shipping from 1811 until the advent of the automobile. Today, Steamboat Natchez is the only steamboat still operating in Crescent City, offering a chance to relive those olden-days experiences. Take a river cruise during the day or a dinner jazz cruise in the evening—either way, you'll ride the steamboat complete with paddlewheel and calliope on a two-hour cruise into a bygone era.

It's only logical for New Orleans to be home to a jazz museum, for this is the city where the musical genre was born. At this comprehensive repository of artifacts from the very beginning of the 20th century, you'll see and hear the history of jazz. The museum also presents more than 365 concerts a year and hosts educational programs for kids (and adults, too) aspiring to play jazz like the city's legends, from Louis Armstrong to Al Hirt, Louis Prima and more.

In this city with a lengthy history and culture surrounding cocktails, the Sazerac cocktail might be the most famous drink to come out of New Orleans. It sits on nearly every bar menu, has been designated the city’s official cocktail, and even has its own museum. Visit the Sazerac House — located at the site where the first cocktail was served — to learn the history of the drink through immersive exhibits and chats with virtual bartenders in an impressive setting.

Located in the oldest part of the French Quarter, the New Orleans Pharmacy Museum is on Chartres Street in the historic building where Louis J. Dufilho Jr. became the first certified, licensed pharmacist in America in 1816. The building is now on the National Register of Historic Places, and the museum looks much like it did when Dufilho was dispensing medicines. This weird and wonderful place has it all: bloodletting tools, patent medicines, voodoo potions, opium tinctures, and, just like the pharmacies of days of yore, a soda fountain.

Spend an afternoon at one of the top zoos in the country. The Audubon Zoo has world-class exhibits featuring animals from Asia, Africa, and South America. You’ll also see seals, reptiles, and a glimpse of the Louisiana swamp. Located behind Audubon Park, the zoo is dotted with majestic oak trees (keep an eye out for resident peacocks). In the summer, the Cool Zoo water park offers a respite from the heat.

This is the mother lode for costume lovers, chockablock with exhibits showcasing the most elaborate and mind-boggling costumes worn during Mardi Gras over the decades. See the outfits that krewe kings, queens, and other royalty don to lead the krewe's floats on a long parade ride; walking krewe costumes; Mardi Gras Indians' feathered and beaded suits; spectacular masks, hats, and more. There's even a costume closet, where museum visitors get a chance to dress up and sit on a throne, just like the kings and queens of Mardi Gras do. All the pieces belong to the collection of Carl Mack, who has preserved and protected these incredible creations for decades of carnival extravaganzas.