Garden District Walking Tour

The journey, in full

Begin your beautiful morning adventure with exclusive access to the interior of the New Orleans Opera Guild Home, located at 2504 Prytania Street in the heart of the Garden District. There is perhaps no neighborhood in the United States more known for its beauty, fragrance, and old world grandeur than the place that has been the beating heart of New Orleans high society for almost two hundred years. The Garden district has been made famous by countless authors, artists and movie stars and on this tour you will get to spy on some of their homes and haunts. You will see the New Orleans residences of celebrities Sandra Bullock, John Goodman, and the childhood home of Payton, Eli, and Cooper Manning. You will also get to visit the famous “House on First Street” also known as the Mayfair House. It was this very house that our beloved author Anne Rice used as a primary setting of her Mayfair Witches novels as now made famous by the AMC television show. Anne Rice is of course perhaps best known for her novel Interview with a Vampire also currently being adapted for television but immortalized forever in the film starring Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise. Other sights you will see on this exciting excursion into wealthy decadence are Commander’s Palace, the most famous and certainly one of the best restaurants in a city already known for its food. It was there that famous chefs Paul Prudhomme and Emeril Lagasse got their starts. You will also see the towering Southern Live Oak trees, Spanish moss, stunning crepe myrtles, fragrant Jasmine, and the lovely Magnolia’s that give the neighborhood its name. Finally, no tour of the neighborhood would be complete without a stop outside the gates of one of the oldest cemeteries in the city, Lafayette #1 (cemetery is permanently closed to the public but may be viewed from the gates). This cemetery is the filming location of numerous movies, tv shows, and commercials. Here you will be shocked to hear about the fascinating burial practices that allow us to inter thousands of people in our cemeteries despite there being very little usable land and the many challenges that people have had to overcome both living and dying here. You have never experienced a neighborhood like the Garden District so come and join us and for a moment be part of a world unlike anything you have imagined and perhaps, like so many before you, you will find yourself inspired to write, or dance, or sing your way down the street.