New Orleans: St. Louis Cemetery No.1

St. Louis Cemetery No.1 is the oldest and most famous of the three St. Louis Roman Catholic cemeteries in New Orleans. It opened in 1798, also making it one of the oldest cemeteries I've ever toured. The cemetery is small and very compact, housing thousands of permanent residents in just one square block.

New Orleans is famous for its above-ground burials, and all of the Catholic tombs in St. Louis are above-ground. Most people think it's because of the high water table, which is only partially true. Vault and tomb burials are most likely traditions brought over from Spain, and most modern-day burials in New Orleans are done below ground.

In 2015, St. Louis Cemetery No. 1 was closed to visitors not accompanied by a tour guide, due to alleged vandalism. This means that you now have to pay to take a tour, which is kind of a bummer. We took a wonderful 3+ hour general tour of the French Quarter that included the cemetery, but no tour will never spend as much time in a cemetery as I would if I was on my own. I'm all for preserving the place, but I do wish I had been able to spend more time poking around.

Notable (alleged) residents include voodoo priestess Marie Laveau and notorious slave-torturer (and former resident of the now-haunted LaLaurie Mansion) Delphine LaLaurie. When the cemetery was open to the public, Marie Laveau's tomb used to be covered in offerings—which I would have loved to see—but when we went it was scrubbed clean.

Of course fact is always stranger than fiction, and it's hard not to love the fact that Nicholas Cage has already purchased a mausoleum for himself—a stark, white pyramid, that our tour guide said was frequently covered in lipstick kisses, but unfortunately it too had been recently cleaned.

I was really overwhelmed with my first foray into the New Orleans cemetery scene, and like I said, I just wish we had spent more time exploring. I had been looking forward to seeing the cemeteries and I knew they would be so unlike the ones we have up north, but they still managed to exceed my expectations. Later in the trip we stumbled upon another cemetery that we were free to roam and that satiated my cemetery obsession a bit better, but I'm hoping I have a chance to go back soon and explore them even further.