In the Crescent City, history isn’t confined to museums. You hear it in the jazz, taste it in the gumbo, and find it dancing after dark.
Less than an hour after arriving in New Orleans, I was standing in Jackson Square, the St. Louis Cathedral to my left, Washington Artillery Park—the Moonwalk—to my right.
With the Mississippi flowing nearby as humidity pressed down beneath the midday sun, I was back in the French Quarter for the first time in 20 years. I had several days to rediscover a city that has always operated on its own clock, and its own rules.
Here, history doesn’t stay behind glass. It gets cooked, played, poured, and danced. Over an extended weekend, I found it everywhere: in colonial squares and wartime artifacts, in jazz clubs and neighborhood galleries, in a bowl of gumbo and a late-night burlesque show.
Begin on Foot
Few pleasures beat wandering the French Quarter, a neighborhood that rewards aimless exploration and, eventually, leads back to Jackson Square. Dating to the early 18th century, the square began as the Place d’Armes, a French colonial parade ground and public market, before being renamed in 1851 for Andrew Jackson, honoring his role in the Battle of New Orleans.
Today it’s a National Historic Landmark and one of the city’s most enduring public spaces—and, on my visit, a stage for unofficial street theater, with musicians performing for passing crowds while mimes, jugglers, and costumed characters competed for tips.
For a deeper dive into the city’s jazz roots, I headed to the New Orleans Jazz Museum, housed in the Old U.S. Mint, built in 1838, where the Quarter meets Frenchmen Street. Royal Street offered a more leisurely stroll through galleries and shops; at the women-owned Union Gallery, local artists’ clothing and one-of-a-kind pieces gave a contemporary edge to the city’s creative spirit.
Eventually, I did what generations of visitors did: stopped at Café du Monde for chicory-laced café au lait and beignets buried in powdered sugar. It was only the beginning of my education in the city’s two great subjects: history and excess.
Patriotic History
No attraction surprised me more than the National World War II Museum. Where I expected a museum visit, I got something closer to an emotional reckoning.
The sprawling seven-acre campus tells the story of America’s involvement in the war, but its real power lies in how often that history intersects with individual lives. I spent more than three hours there and still felt I’d only scratched the surface.
The museum began as the National D-Day Museum, opening June 6, 2000, founded by author Stephen Ambrose. Senior historian Bradley Hart explained that while the institution now tells the war’s full story, D-Day remains at its heart—fittingly, since the Higgins boats used in the D-Day landings were invented and built in New Orleans by industrialist Andrew Higgins, whose company produced more than 20,000 of the amphibious craft for Allied operations.
I tailored my visit around my father’s military service, following the Philippines campaigns through the Campaigns of Courage gallery and the postwar experience in the Liberation Pavilion. Along the way, artifacts made the war’s scale feel suddenly intimate: a wedding gown fashioned from a veteran’s parachute silk, a note home written on stationery recovered from Hitler’s desk. I also caught the Bill Mauldin cartoon exhibition, on display through April 2027, before finishing with Beyond All Boundaries, the immersive 4D film narrated and produced by Tom Hanks.
History is most powerful when it stops being abstract. It becomes a person, a letter, a uniform—or, in my case, a father.
Beyond the Quarter
New Orleans’ history is deep, but its creative energy is anything but stuck in the past. That’s evident at JAMNOLA, an immersive arts experience tucked into the Bywater neighborhood. Housed in a former bakery, the colorful attraction brings together more than 30 installations by local artists, curated music, and an Alice-in-Wonderland-style journey through the city’s culture—giant alligators, Mardi Gras colors, and surreal takes on New Orleans’ underground scene.
It’s part art exhibit, part playground, part selfie magnet, and a reminder that the city has always known how to reinvent itself without losing its identity.
History, on the Plate
In New Orleans, history is also something you eat. Centuries of French, Spanish, African, Caribbean, and Creole influences have shaped a cuisine that feels less like a collection of recipes than a living archive—one today’s chefs are interpreting, not just preserving.
I happened to visit during a special weekend, when the city hosted the Americas selections for the Pastry World Cup 2027 (Coupe du Monde de la Pâtisserie) and the Bocuse d’Or Americas, often called the Olympics of gastronomy. But the food culture is ultimately experienced one plate at a time.
Dinner at the upscale fish camp Delacroix, named for the fishing community 21 miles south of the city, left me nostalgic for a Louisiana memaw’s cooking I never had growing up in Minnesota.
Chef de cuisine Wiley Lewis, a Shreveport native who learned to cook from her grandfather, brings deep Louisiana flavor to the Spanish Plaza spot overlooking the Mississippi. Her Red Snapper Collar—fatty meat from behind the fish’s head, lightly dredged and fried crisp—arrived with smoked chili and saffron ruby butters, paired with a clean Kajun Kölsch.
The Crab and Shrimp Pistolet, a bread pocket of rice and Creole sauce, was the kind of dish I’d raid the fridge for at midnight, if any had survived; Billy’s Smoked Gumbo delivered serious depth, and I finally surrendered after a Soft-shell Crab Almondine.
Lunch the next day at Cochon offered a different, looser expression of Cajun and Southern cooking: wood-fired oysters, fried alligator bites, and pork dishes alongside inventive pairings. The Rabbit and Dumplings, with pillowy drop biscuits floating in celery-carrot-onion gravy, had all the comfort of a good pot pie—the kind of place where families gather and adventurous eaters try something new without feeling intimidated.
Breakfast here operates on its own plane; every day feels like Sunday brunch, and someone’s always pouring a cocktail. At Ruby Slipper, the Bacon Bloody Marys have a following of their own, though the biscuits and gravy gave my eventual favorite, the Bananas Foster Pain Perdu, real competition.
Then came the Dew Drop Inn, where we caught the monthly Legends of the Dew Drop: Road to Rock & Roll Creole Brunch, a musical revue paired with a buffet celebrating one of New Orleans’ most important Black-owned entertainment venues.
Once a nightclub, hotel, barbershop, and performance space, the Dew Drop was a key stop on the Chitlin’ Circuit, giving Black musicians and travelers a place to perform, stay, and gather during segregation; Ray Charles, Little Richard, James Brown, Tina Turner, Etta James, and John Coltrane all played its stage.
Its revival brings that history into the present, a reminder that here, cultural history doesn’t just get studied. Sometimes it takes the stage and sings back.
A Room with a Past
I stayed at the Kimpton Hotel Fontenot, a stylish home base in the Warehouse District with portions of the building dating to 1844. Contemporary design, a convenient location, and the Peacock Room just off the lobby made it an easy place to return to after long days and later nights.
And New Orleans nights can run long. My last evening ended with a nightcap at the Royal Sonesta, where the Trixie Minx Burlesque show delivered jazz-backed, bawdy fun. Funny, sexy, and unmistakably New Orleans. An irreverent finale to a weekend spent moving between the city’s past and present.
New Orleans doesn’t ask you to choose between history and hedonism; it gives you both. The past here isn’t something you leave behind when the museum closes. It follows you into the restaurant, onto the dance floor, down the street, and into the music.
I left with powdered sugar on my shirt and no intention of waiting another 20 years to return.
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*Photos courtesy of the National WWII Museum, New Orleans & Company, Michael J. Solender
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