New Orleans

New Orleans was founded in the spring of 1718 by the French Mississippi Company under Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne de Bienville, on land traditionally inhabited by the Chitimacha people, on high ground beside the Mississippi near its mouth. Short of labour, the colonists turned to the Atlantic slave trade; enslaved Africans arrived in large numbers from the early 1720s, and an Afro-Creole culture of African traditions, Catholicism and the French language took shape. France ceded Louisiana to Spain in 1763, and nearly all the 18th-century buildings of the French Quarter date from the Spanish period.

The United States bought the city with the Louisiana Purchase of 1803. Refugees from the Haitian Revolution, white and free people of colour with the people they enslaved, doubled the population in 1809, and Andrew Jackson defeated the British at the Battle of New Orleans in January 1815. The port grew rich on cotton and sugar and held the country's largest slave market, yet the city also had the largest and most prosperous community of free people of colour. By 1860 it was the third-largest US port by import tonnage. Homer Plessy's arrest on a train leaving the city in 1892 led to the Supreme Court ruling that upheld segregation.

Railways and highways drew trade away in the 20th century, and the population peaked at 627,525 in 1960 before decades of decline. On 29 August 2005 the federal levees failed during Hurricane Katrina; about 80 per cent of the city flooded, more than 1,300 people died and the population halved. Recovery has been long and uneven. On 1 January 2025 a truck attack on Bourbon Street during New Year celebrations killed 15 people and injured 35.

New Orleans was the only North American city to allow enslaved people to gather in public and play their own music, largely in Congo Square, and in the early 20th century it gave birth to jazz. African American brass bands have played for more than a century, leading the parades that visitors call jazz funerals and the Sunday second lines of the social aid and pleasure clubs. Funk flourished in the 1960s and 1970s, the city developed its own hip-hop, bounce, by the late 1980s, and Lil Wayne, Master P and Cash Money Records came out of it.

Carnival is the centre of the year. The season opens on Twelfth Night, 6 January, private krewe balls follow, and about two weeks of parades — from old krewes such as Rex to Zulu and the modern super krewes — end on Mardi Gras, the day before Lent. Jazz Fest, the Essence Festival, the French Quarter Festival and Southern Decadence fill much of the rest of the calendar. The Saints and the Pelicans are followed with passion.

Catholic heritage shows in the street names, the parochial schools and the festivals, and Louisiana Voodoo, though widely marketed to tourists, has only a small number of serious followers. The local accent, often called Yat after the greeting "Where y'at?", sounds closer to New York than to the rural South — a legacy of Irish, Italian, German and Jewish families who moved in from New York and other north-eastern cities. The city's literary life includes Tennessee Williams, who set A Streetcar Named Desire here.

New Orleans had about 384,000 people at the 2020 census, and the metropolitan area about a million. The city and Orleans Parish share the same boundaries. The port is one of the largest in the country, the region refines oil and makes petrochemicals, NASA's Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans East builds rocket stages, and Tulane University and the hospitals are large employers, but tourism is a staple of the economy.

The city sits in a bowl: its average elevation is between one and two feet below sea level, parts of it are sinking, and the levees and pumps rebuilt after Katrina reduce rather than remove the risk of flooding. Coastal wetland loss has left it more exposed to storm surge. Black residents, renters and people on low incomes were hit hardest by the flood, and poverty and violent crime in some neighbourhoods remain pressing issues. In late December 2025, 350 Louisiana National Guard troops were deployed to the city.

People orient themselves by the river: uptown and downtown mean upriver and downriver of Canal Street, and the West Bank lies across the water. Life moves at a slower pace than in most American cities, with long lunches, porch conversations and parades through the neighbourhoods.

The city's cooking blends Creole, haute Creole and French traditions with African, Spanish, Cajun and Italian influences. Gumbo, a dark stew thickened with roux, okra or filé; jambalaya, rice cooked with meat or seafood; and étouffée, shellfish smothered in a thick sauce over rice, are the classic Creole dishes. Gulf oysters are eaten raw on the half-shell or fried, and boiled crawfish is a spring ritual.

Two sandwiches are local institutions. The po' boy is a long, crisp-crusted French bread loaf filled with fried shrimp, oysters or roast beef in gravy; the muffuletta, from the Italian community, is a round sesame loaf layered with cured meats, cheese and olive salad. Beignets — square fried dough heaped with powdered sugar — come with café au lait made with chicory coffee, and pralines, made with brown sugar, cream, butter and pecans, are the city's sweet.

Old Creole restaurants are part of the city's history: Antoine's, founded in 1840, is one of the oldest family-run restaurants in the country, and Dooky Chase's in Tremé fed civil rights leaders in the 1950s and 1960s. Coffee, cocktails and the French Market's stalls complete the picture.