When I entered the gateway, I was struck with surprise and admiration. Though destitute of trees, the cemetery is certainly more deserving, from its peculiarly novel and unique appearance, of the attention of strangers, than...any other in the United States.

The Experience

Travelers' accounts dating from the earliest years of the nineteenth century, and continuing through to the present day, reference the New Orleans' "cities of the dead" as curiosities not to be missed on a visit to New Orleans. Even arm-chair travelers of the nineteenth century could visit one of these other-worldly places through the many travel accounts in publications such as the Daily Advertiser (1802), Scribner's Monthly Magazine (1873), and various Harper's Weekly articles and sketches dating from the 1860s through the early 1900s.

Unlike other nineteenth century cemeteries located elsewhere in the United States, St. Louis Cemetery No.1 truly resembles a dense miniature city. With structures of varying styles and sizes, housing all classes, races, and ethnicities representing New Orleans society, St. Louis Cemetery No. 1 is a tangible record of a continuously developing cultural history. The existing landscape of tomb styles, types, and sizes is a landscape that tourists of the past would still recognize. Accounts dating back to the earliest years of the cemetery's visitation describe the mixture of rich, well-kept, limewashed tombs with unkempt monuments and ruins. This contrasting picture of richness and decay is part of the historical significance of the landscape.1

In the early 1800s, travelers sought out the cemetery to enjoy a sublime and foreign experience. Upon entering the wrought-iron gates and passing through the "tortuous paths," visitors allowed the visual experience of the place to stimulate emotion and reflect on life, death, and mortality – common themes of romanticism in the nineteenth century. Later visitors came to see this unique cemetery to view the "sepulchral houses" of the famous and infamous of New Orleans. Today, the cemetery is still a major tourist draw, and cemetery tours are a key element for the total New Orleans experience.2 Many visitors are drawn by the architectural and historical content of the cemetery, while others come for the modern intrigue of voodoo, vampires, ghosts, and the sensationalism created by fictional accounts in popular books and movies.3

Historically, the cemetery was visited because of its unusual appearance and emotive qualities. It evoked a sense of melancholy and nostalgia with its maze of paths, decaying brick tombs and unusual epitaphs. Today, architecture, intrigue, history, and memory draw the modern tourist to this place. Whether it is through one of the many organized tours, or through individual discovery, each visitor who walks through the iron gates of St. Louis Cemetery No. 1 is cast into a world separate and unlike their own.

Opening quote: Joseph Holt Ingraham, The South-West by a Yankee, Vol. 1, 1835, p. 154.
1. Selected visitor comments can be found in the following: David Lee Sterling, "New Orleans, 1801: An Account by John Pintard," Louisiana Historical Quarterly Vol 34 no 3 (July 1951): 230; Samuel Wilson, Jr. ed., Impressions Respecting New Orleans by Benjamin Henry Boneval Latrobe: Diary & Sketches 1818-1820, (New York: Columbia University Press, 1951), 82; Edward C. Carter II, John C. Van Horne, and Lee W. Formwalt, eds. Samuel Wilson, Jr. Consulting Ed. The Journals of Benjamin Henry Latrobe 1799-1820 From Philadelphia to New Orleans, (New Haven: Yale University Press for The Maryland Historical Society, 1980), 241; Timothy Flint, Recollections of the last ten years, passed in occasional residences and journeyings in the valley of the Mississippi, (1826 reprint, New York: Johnson Reprint Corp., 1968), 225; Cyril Thornton, Men and Manners in America, 2nd ed. vol. II (Edinburgh: William Blackwood, 1834), 215; Joseph Holt Ingraham, The South - West By a Yankee, vol. 1 (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1835), 145,154-55; H. Didimus, New Orleans As I Found It (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1845); Lady Emmeline Stuart Wortley, Travels in the United States etc. During 1848 and 1850 (New York: Harper & Brothers, Publishers, 1851), 126; Sir Charles Lyell, A second visit to the United States of North America, New York: Harper and Bros, Pub. 1849, Vol II p. 96; A. Oakey Hall, The Manhattaner in New Orleans or, Phases of "Crescent City" Life. 1851. Reprint for the Louisiana American Revolution Bicentennial Commission, Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1976; Fredrika Bremer, The Homes of the New World; Impressions of America, trans. Mary Howett (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1854), 214; Louis M. Hacker, ed. Mark Twain, Life on the Mississippi, (New York: Sagamore Press, Inc., 1957), 223. Back
2. At least 7 different tour companies are registered with the Archdiocesan Cemeteries to be able to conduct tours through St. Louis Cemetery No. 1 and hundreds of tourist visit the cemetery daily. Back
3. Many of the Anne Rice novels feature the New Orleans cemeteries and Easy Rider and Double Jeopardy are well known films with scenes in St. Louis Cemetery No. 1 and Lafayette No. 1 respectively. Back