Things to do in New Orleans

Neighborhood · Upriver from downtown, along St. Charles Avenue

The nineteenth-century American quarter of mansions, live oaks and cast iron, threaded by the oldest continuously operating streetcar line in the world, which has run on St. Charles since 1835.

Local tip: Ride the St. Charles line end to end for the price of a fare rather than paying for a tour — it is a working commuter route, not a heritage ride. Lafayette Cemetery No. 1 and Magazine Street's six miles of independent shops are the walk to pair it with.

Nightlife · Downriver from the French Quarter

Creole cottages in improbable colours on the high ground of the natural levee, with Frenchmen Street's live music strip at the upriver end and Crescent Park's riverfront walk at the other.

Local tip: Frenchmen Street is where locals send you instead of Bourbon Street, and the honest version is that it is now half tourists too — but the music is real and the cover charges are small. Go on a weeknight. The Rusty Rainbow bridge into Crescent Park is the best free view of the river in the city.

Nature · Mid-City, toward the lake

One of the largest urban parks in the country, holding the world's biggest stand of mature live oaks, the New Orleans Museum of Art, a sculpture garden and a 1900s wooden carousel, with a slow bayou running out of it toward the old Creole faubourgs.

Local tip: Couturie Forest inside the park contains Laborde Mountain, at about 43 feet the highest natural point in the city — a joke and a genuinely useful thing to understand about local topography. Bayou St. John on a Sunday afternoon is where the city goes to sit down.

Landmark · The original city, on the river

Thirteen blocks by six of Spanish colonial architecture built after the fires of 1788 and 1794, still a residential neighbourhood as well as the most visited few streets in the American South.

Local tip: The Quarter before 9am is a different and much better place — the Café du Monde queue is short, the streets are being washed, and Royal and Chartres are quiet. Bourbon Street is four blocks of that; the other ninety blocks are not it.

Neighborhood · Across the river, reached by ferry

A small, intact nineteenth-century village on the West Bank, on some of the highest ground in the parish, with a passenger ferry to the foot of Canal Street that takes about ten minutes.

Local tip: The ferry is the cheapest and best boat ride in Louisiana and it is a commuter service, not an excursion. Point houses are noticeably cheaper than the equivalent stock on the East Bank for the same age and detail, and the flood history is better.

Culture · Just downriver and lakeside of the Quarter

One of the oldest Black neighbourhoods in the United States, where Congo Square's Sunday gatherings fed directly into the invention of jazz, with St. Roch Market and the Backstreet Cultural Museum nearby.

Local tip: Congo Square in Louis Armstrong Park still hosts drum circles on Sunday afternoons and anyone may stand in the ring. Second line parades run through here most Sundays from late summer to spring — the routes are published and following one on foot is the single best introduction to the city.