New Orleans (in French: Nouvelle-Orléans) is the largest city in Louisiana, which has been federated in the south of the United States of America.
New Orleans | ||
Embrace and Flag | ||
Appellants | Crescent City, The Big Easy, The City That Care Forgot | |
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Status | United States of America | |
Federated State | Louisiana | |
Region | New Orleans Metropolitan Area | |
Altitude | -2 to 6 m s.l.m. | |
Surface | 3,755 km² | |
Inhabitants | 1,262,888 (estimate 2016) | |
Phone Prefix | +1 504 | |
Postal Code | 22-55000 | |
Time Zone | UTC-06 | |
Position
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Tourism site | ||
Institutional site | ||
To know
New Orleans has at least three names coined in a number of times that try to highlight their character, often relaxed or even lazy:
- Crescent City alludes to the sinuous course of the lower Mississippi that forms crescent - shaped meandri. Of these, the largest is the Uptown area, with the French and Carrollton quarters at its extremes.
- The Big Easy ended in the early 20th century and alluded to the relative ease of finding work, but others said it dates back to the age of Prohibitionism and alluded to the ease of finding alcohol despite the federal ban.
- The City that Care Forgot, or "City forgets its problems", dates back to 1938 and refers to the carefree nature of residents.
Geographical overview
The city of New Orleans is located in the Mississippi Delta region, about 170 km from the Gulf of Mexico. It extends across the river, even though its most interesting neighborhoods are all on the left bank. In the north, the dwelling is limited by Lake Pontchartrain, a vast stretch of brackish, very shallow waters.
When to go
Winter and spring is the best time to visit the city, not because the heat is much better, but especially because during this period there are two famous events that will make your stay in New Orleans memorable: The carnival culminates in the mardi Gras (Mardi Gras) and the Jazz Festival.
Summer, which is very long, is the least well - suited period for a visit. The heat and humidity are very overwhelming and those who can leave the city to take holidays in milder places.
The hurricane season officially begins in June but it is between August and September that the chances of encapsulating in dilutes of biblical dimensions increase. Autumn can be a period of retreat where a visit can be scheduled, also in view of the fact that hotels charge low-season fares. As early as October, the sun is already shining again and temperatures are beginning to fall gradually.
It is still to be noted that winter temperatures can sometimes fall below 12º, making it necessary to pack appropriate items against cold and humidity. Although snow precipitation is a rare phenomenon, it cannot be excluded completely. Mixed snowflakes in the rain fell in small quantities in 2004, just on Christmas Eve and the following days, the roads showed thin layers of ice. The last significant snow took place on the morning of 11 December 2008.
March, April and May have long been highly volatile with frequent rains sometimes accompanied by air trumpets, but they leave room for the sun even during the same day.
History
New Orleans was founded in the spring of 1718 by the French company Mississippi under the command of Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne de Bienville, in the land then inhabited by the Chitimacha. By convention, the birthdays of the city will be 7 May, but in reality the exact day of its foundation remains unknown. She was thus called in honor of Philip II of Borbón-Orléans, the king of the Kingdom of France at the time.
The French colony was transferred to the Spanish empire under the 1763 Paris Treaty. During the American War of Independence (1775-1783), the port of New Orleans provided a support base for the rebels of the 13 colonies fighting against the British crown. Battles loaded with weapons and vettoal vehicles rode the Mississippi River to combat zones. Bernardo de Gálvez y Madrid, the Spanish governor of Cuba and Louisiana successfully launched a campaign against the British in 1779. Nueva Orleans remained under Spanish control until 1800, when she briefly returned to France. Almost the entire architecture of the 18TH century that survived the Vieux Carré (French quarter) dates back to the Spanish period with the exception of the old Orsoline convent.
Napoleon sold Louisiana (New France) to the newly created United States of America in 1803. Later, the city grew rapidly with the Influx OF AMERICAN, FRENCH, Creole, and African Slaves. They were joined by successive waves of Irish, German and Italian. Thanks to the work of slaves, vast cotton and sugar cane plantations owned by Creole landowners spread out of oil.
Thousands of refugees from the Haitian Revolution of 1804, both white and free-colored (French or gens de couleur libres), flocked to New Orleans, accompanied by slaves of African descent. While Governor Claiborne wanted to stem further immigration of freed black people, the Creole landowners worked to favor it and increase the French-speaking labor for their plantations.
As a result, the population of New Orleans doubled in the following years. The city became 63% black, far more than other cities in the southern states.
During the Anglo-American War (1812-1815), the British besieged New Orleans and a bloody battle took place on January 8, 1815, despite the armistice between the two belligerents having been signed two weeks earlier.
The port of New Orleans played an important role in the slave trade as well as in the trade in international goods which were then transhipped on smaller vessels and sailboats to the Mississippi River. The slave market was a major factor in the urban economy of the time. Two-thirds of slaves headed to the United States came to the port of New Orleans and were then sorted in all the other southern states. The slave trade generated a value of tens of billions of dollars at the current exchange rate, of which the main beneficiaries were Creole until 1852, when legislative measures restricted the trade and practically closed it.
Until that date, the Creole community was an organized, well - educated and very high - income class with its French - speaking educational institutions in a city of 170,000 inhabitants.
The American civil war (1861-1865) ended the supremacy of the Creole elite. In 1862, the northern forces under the command of General Benjamin Butler occupied the city. Butler abolished the teaching of the French language in urban schools, and for that reason he was hated by the Creoles who bestowed upon him the nickname "Beast Butler" (where the word "beast" was the devil). The general's move was the first in a series of measures to strengthen the English language destined to become predominant in business and government actions. At the end of the 19th century, the use of French in the daily life of New Orleans was a minority. In 1902, only a quarter of the population of the inhabitants spoke in French and two-fourths were able to understand them. Until 1945, many elderly female creole didn't speak English. The last French-language newspaper in large circulation, L'Abeille de la Nouvelle-Orléans, ceased its publications on 27 December 1923. Other smaller newspapers like "Le Courier de la Nouvelle Orleans" survived until 1955.
As a result of the civil conflict, the Congress extended the right of full citizenship to liberates and free persons of color. Louisiana was readmitted to the union in 1868. His 1868 constitution granted universal suffrage for men and public education to all citizens. Both blacks and whites were elected to local and state government. In 1872, lieutenant governor PBS Pinchback, a mulatto, was for a short time Republican governor of Louisiana, becoming the first governor of African descent of an American state.
Since 1868, the Louisiana elections were marked by racial violence, as the White tried to suppress the right to vote for the Black. The "White League", a rebel paramilitary group that supported the Democratic Party, was established in 1874 and operated openly, waging battles against the city police to take control of state offices and favor its democratic candidate for governor's post. In 1876, such tactics led the white Democrats, the so-called Redeemers, to gain political control of the state. The federal government resigned and withdrew its troops the following year.
When they came to power, white Democrats passed the "Jim Crow" laws, establishing racial segregation in public buildings. In 1889, the Legislative Body passed a constitutional amendment incorporating a "grandfather's clause" that effectively deprived liberates and people with a color tampered with before the war. Without the right to vote, African Americans could not serve in juries or local offices and were excluded from official politics for generations. The principle of racial segregation that remained in force until 1960 was also introduced in public schools.
The mostly francophone community of black people who had been free before the civil war (gens de couleur libres), organized themselves into committees to try to regain lost civil rights. Committee chief Homer Plessy got on a commuter train from New Orleans, sitting in a white-only carriage and was arrested. The case was discussed in the US Supreme Court in 1896. The court ruled that the white-black separations were constitutional, endorsing Jim Crow's measures. The anti - racial sentiment has spread to other white minorities in New Orleans. In 1891, an angry mob attacked 11 Italians accused of killing the police chief, despite the fact that some had been acquitted of the charge. All eleven were executed or hanged in prison where they were detained. In July 1900, the city was rocked by white riots after Robert Charles, a young African - American, killed a policeman and managed to escape temporarily. The white men found him and killed him along with 20 other blacks.
Throughout the history of New Orleans, until the beginning of the 20th century, when medical and scientific advances improved the situation, the city has experienced repeated epidemics of yellow fever and other tropical and infectious diseases.
From the mid - 19th century onwards, New Orleans lost its economic standing in favor of other southern cities. The loss was due to the opening of new railways and highways that resulted in a drastic reduction in the flow of freight. New Orleans continued to expand, but at a slow pace compared to Houston, Dallas, and Atlanta. Its cargo port remained one of the largest in the country, but automation cost thousands of jobs. The relatively small manufacturing sector fell further after World War II.Since 1970, the city has also suffered a demographic decline: thousands of black people left the city to settle in California and Michigan.
Between 1964 and 1965, the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act were enacted, which, in addition to ending a century of racial segregation, gave all citizens the right to vote regardless of their skin color.
How to orient
Quarters

How to get
By plane
- 1 New Orleans-Louis Armstrong International Airport. The city's main airport is located in the Kenner suburb. After a sharp drop in passenger traffic as a result of Hurricane Kathrina in 2005, the airport regained its previous position and in 2016, 11,139,421 passengers transited, 4.4% more than in 2015. It is linked to 37 North American destinations and to the European airports in London-Heathrow (British Airways) and Frankfurt (seasonal flights operated by Condor only). package package package package tours are available from various UK agencies and tour operators.
- Taxi is the most convenient way to get to the city ($36 for one or two people, $15 per person for groups of three or more passengers). Prices are fixed for every point in the French Quarter or in the Central Business District. The limousine service is available at a price of $35 and the fare for a small shuttle bus starts at $20. See the airport site for more options.
- The cheapest way to get to the city is to board the Jefferson Transit Airport Express E2-Airport at a cost of only $2. On weekdays, the bus runs along Highway US 61 for Tulane and Loyola Ave. in the central business district of New Orleans; the journey lasts 45 minutes.
- The bus stop is at the second level of the airport, outside gate n. 7, near the Delta Airlines counter at the west end of the terminal.
- The major hotels in New Orleans make shuttle buses available to their customers.
By train and bus
- 2 New Orleans Union Passenger Terminal, 1001 Loyola Avenue. The Union Passenger Terminal is hosting both the train station and the bus station. It's located in the Central Business Distric, just a few steps away from the Super Dome. You're stopping both the Greyhound buses and the intercity trains in Amtrak. The low - cost Megabus bus routes from Atlanta, Montgomery, Mobile, Baton Rouge, Houston, San Antonio, Tallahassee, Gainesville and Orlando. The city bus stop is just outside the terminal, next to the parking lot.
How to move
What to see
Events & Holidays
- New Orleans carnival (Mardi Gras).
- French Quarter Festival. April. The music event usually takes place one week after the one dedicated to jazz in various parts of the French quarter. Its first edition dates back to 1984. Today it's followed by over 700,000 people.
- The New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival. April/May. It takes place in the exhibition space and is second only to the public carnival. Its first edition dates back to 1970. It is not only devoted to jazz but also to other traditional and contemporary genres such as cajun, blues, R & B, gospel, folk, Latin, rock, rap, country and bluegrass. The festival is also accompanied by cultural exhibitions, craftsmanship and gastronomic events attended by the best chefs in New Orleans. It therefore represents a way to taste the local dishes below at a minimum price
- Essence Music Festival. July.
- San Fermin in Nueva Orleans. July.
- Southern Decadence. August.
- Voodoo Experience. October.
What to do
- River cruises — The most renowned Mississippi cruises are organized on vintage boats for the Steamboat Natchez company, which were trained on board by jazz music complexes. They're still very expensive. At the end of all our pockets is the passage on the "John James Audubon" boat that from the pier at the bottom of Canal Street (on the edge of the French quarter and the business quarter) to the "Aquarium of the Americas" and the Audubon Zoo.
Purchasing
How to have fun
Where to eat

New Orleans is an internationally renowned gastronomic destination. Culinary traditions are strongly influenced by Creole cuisine, cajun cuisine and soul food. Rice and seafood are the most common ingredients. Below is a review of the most renowned dishes, with restaurant dishes where they can be tasted:
- Key Scope
- Eels - smoked sausages made from pork previously roasted in a wine sauce with onions, garlic and pepper. You can enjoy it at restaurant 1 Gumbo Shop at No. 630 in Saint Peter Street.
- Blackened redfish - redfish filets salted with butter in an iron pan without a lid for 10 minutes, spiced with sweet paprika and flavored with dry gold leaves.
- Boiled seafood - A shrimp soup, crabs and other crustaceans typical of Cajun cooking. It is served at events and festivals but can also be found in restaurants such as 2 Deanie's Seafood Restaurant at No 841 in Iberville St.
- Calas - A rice cake suitable for breakfast. The method of obtaining it is similar to the method followed for supplements and orange (fried), but, being a dessert, the ingredients differ quite a bit. In the traditional recipe, the rice was boiled and then let to cool for one night with the addition of yeast to make it as soft as possible. The next morning, a pastel with eggs, sugar, nutmeg and a little rice flour was prepared to tie it all together. The dough was dropped to spoon in the boiling, fried fat until it was completely cooked. The origin of the calas was attributed to African slaves who worked on rice plantations. It seems that the term is related to the Kara word of the Nupe dialect of today's Nigeria, which means fried dessert. The French of Louisiana adopted dessert from 1653 and called it beignets de riz. Still, some African-American or Creole walks out into the street with their hamper full of calas in the early hours of dawn calling the passers-by shouting: "Bel calas tout chauds!" - (A good calas, still hot) Its use is however much less widespread today than the Beignets and is restricted to Carnival or Catholic ceremonies like baptisms and communion. You can try to order it at the famous 3 Café du Monde at Decatur Street no. 800 open 24 hours a day, but because it's always very crowded and there's no need to find the calas every day you could fold down to the least-known 4 The Old Coffee Pot Restaurant at No. 71 4 St. Peter Street.
- Couche-Couche - Suitable for breakfast, Couche-Couche is a plate made of maize grains amalgamated with milk or sugar cane syrups.
- Dirty rice - A creole dish made of unsavory rice with broiled livers and broiled chicken offal along with green peppers, celery and onions. The name is derived from the dark coloring of the rice after being seasoned with the ingredients. If the chicken offal is replaced by pieces of pork or beef, the plate changes the name to ‘rice dressing’.
- Eggs Sardou - A dish made from eggs in a shirt, artichoke hearts and spinach reduced to puree. The whole thing is seasoned Dutch sauce, an emulsion of egg yolk and liquid butter, usually flavored with lemon juice, salt, white pepper or cayenne. It's a dish made by Antoine's restaurant, but you can find it at Brennan's.
- Étouffée - A dish made of creole but also cajun made of rice and seafood in a beschamella sauce called "roux blond", obtained by continuously mixing flour, corn and butter starches into a pan. He was originally from Breaux Bridge, a small center in Louisiana, and first appeared in New Orleans in 1983, placed on the restaurant's menu. 5 Galatoire's at No 209 Bourbon Street.
- Gumbo - A very tasty stew whose main ingredient is the ocra, a vegetable slightly resembling a zucchini but tastes very different. Very little known in Italy, the oocra is easily found in France and other Mediterranean and African countries. The word gumbo comes from the word bantu used to define the ocra. The dish consists of rice usually seasoned with seafood (mainly crabs and shrimps), but also poultry (chicken, duck and pheasant) or cajun cuisine-style sausages, which are then stuffed for a long time in a very thick sauce with a characteristic red color (roux), with peppers, onions and celery (Holy Trinity). The gumbo is considered a suitable dish for winter.
- Jambalaya - a dish of provençal origin with African, Spanish (paella) and amerindie influences. There's the Creole variant and the Cajun variant. jambalaya is considered a dish of simple rice to prepare compared to other traditional dishes such as gumbo and the étouffée. Most of the time, basmati long rice is used. In the method of preparing jambalaya, rice is added to vegetables, meat, seafood and broth and the taste is absorbed by rice grains during cooking. The meat is jumping into an iron pan and when it is colored onions, celery and green or red peppers are added. The stock and seasonings are added in the next step. The rice is then added, which is allowed to simmerly cook for at least 30 minutes. One of the restaurants to enjoy the jambalaya is 6 Mother's at No. 401 Poydras Street.
- Maque choux - A dish perhaps one of the Indians of America, adopted by cooking, makes it as if it were French. It's based on corn, green peppers and onions. You sometimes add garlic, parsley and tomato. The ingredients are crushed into butter and then blown into a casserole. As described, it's a contour, but you can also make it a main dish by adding white meat or fish that is mostly shrimp.
- Muffuletta - A Sicilian food imported to New Orleans in 1906 by Salvatore Lupo, the manager of 7 Central Grocery, which still exists. It's a sandwich made of a large oval-shaped, very soft milk sandwich stuffed with olives, salami, ham, provolone and mortar. While in Sicily, muffuletta is not widely used today, New Orleans is now mostly home and everyone knows the sausage address on Decatour Street 923 in the heart of the French neighborhood.
- Oysters Bienville - A plate of oysters, shrimp, mushrooms, green peppers and a sherry-sprinkled roux butter sauce. Parmesan or other cheese and scratched bread are added. It's rewarded to the oven or in pan with oysters in their shell. The dish is on the list of Arnaud's restaurant and a few other local celebrities, such as Antoine’s, 8 Commander’s Palace, 9 Pascal’s Manale (whose chef Alex Guarnaschelli was awarded the "The Best Thing I Ever Ate" prize in 2008) and steakhouse 1 Emeril's Delmonico.
- Oysters en brochette - a stark appetizer from creole cooking. Oysters are alternating with bacon pieces (bacon). It's often stuffed with corn flour and then jumped into a frying pan. Traditionally, oysters have to be cured with little skins of triangular shape previously coated with butter or meunière sauce and then sprinkled with salt and pepper. If it's well prepared, it should be crunchy but be soft on the palate. One variant wants mushrooms to be used instead of bacon.
- Oysters Rockefeller - Rockefeller oysters are a starter breed created in 1899 at restaurant 11 Antoine's, one of New Orleans's best known restaurants. Although the recipe for the sauce accompanying the oysters is a secret, it is known to be made from butter, parsley and other vegetables such as pureed spinach and then baked or grilled. Other restaurants in New Orleans included the dish in their menu, but no one was able to match the prepared dishes at Antoine's restaurant in taste.
- Guns - a fried bread sandwich (a half-baguette) stuffed with seafood (crustaceans for the most part) but also meat. It's easily found in Vietnamese restaurants.
- A little boy — a very popular sandwich, made out of roast beef but more often with shrimps, crabs and oysters and other seafood passed into a frying pan. Bread is the typical French baguette. According to tradition, the term means poor boy and was provided free of charge by the owners of a restaurant in New Orleans to their former colleagues of the local tramway company who were striking in 1929 to obtain a salary increase (poor boys). There is also a variant, the Vietnamese Po' Boy or bánh Mì, served in bakeries and restaurants run by immigrants from Vietnam, a fairly large community in New Orleans that shares a French colony history with residents of New Orleans. A good address for tasting the bánh mì and other Vietnamese specialties is the 12 Dong Phuong Oriental Bakery, quite out of hand for pedestrian tourists.
- Pompano en Papillote - A dish invented by the restaurant Antoine's at a banquet in honor of the Brazilian aviation pioneer Alberto Santos-Dumont. It is a fish filet dish (Pompano) with a flavor-free carpet with a wine-based sauce, shrimp and crabs (white sauce).
- Red beans and rice - red beans and rice make up an exclusive Creole dish that does not appear in cajun cuisine. Creols eat it out of Monday's tradition, exploiting the meat leftovers from Sunday lunch. These leftovers usually consist of pork bones, ham, or even sausages such as andouille and chaurice. His preparation includes the usual green peppers, celery and onions to which the meat leftovers are added. The rice boiled apart. It's a home dish, absent from the most popular restaurant list, but easily available on Mondays in the most modest ones.
- Rice and gravy - A plate of rice and white meat (chicken or turkey) or even beef or pork cut into small pieces and long-focus stuffed in a casserole preferably made of iron to make them as tender as possible. To make it tastier, the usual ceiling called Holy Trinity (celery, green onions and peppers) is prepared.
- Shrimp Creole - cooked steamed rice with Norway lobster in a tomato sauce added to an onion, celery and peppers (Holy Trinity). One of the restaurants to enjoy it is the Brennan's.
- Turtle soup - It's the turtle soup that is served as a starter in the best restaurants in Paris, but also in Singapore and the Far East. New Orleans Creoli call the turtle broth "caouane." It's on the Commander's Palace restaurants, Brennan's, and Galatoire's menu. The broth in its creole variant is spiced and flavored with thymus or oregano. Dry sherry is added to the Commander's Palace, which is considered the best in food preparation.
- Yaka mein - A spicy soup of beef, fresh pasta and onions. At the end of the cooking, you dipped a whole egg. He is also called old soberbecause he is considered a remedy for symptoms of drunkenness. It's found in Chinese restaurants and Cajun cooking restaurants.
- Condiments and sauces
- Crystal Hot Sauce - A very popular, large-scale, hot red chili sauce made by the local Baumer Foods factory since 1923. You'll easily find the bottles on the shelves of the smallest supermarket.
- Remoulade - La rémoulade is a sauce typical of French cuisine and is essentially mayonnaise with mustard. The Creole variant uses paprika or Cayenne pepper and has a more intense red color because the local mustard, called zatarain's, has a darker color. It's very common in New Orleans and in Southern Louisiana in general.
- Sweets and desserts
- Bananas Foster - a dessert made from flambé bananas, vanilla ice cream, plus a sauce with butter, sugar, cinnamon, rum and banana liquor. The flame or flambé is usually set beside the dining table to give a greater effect. The dessert was created at Brennan's restaurant.
- Beignet - The beignet corresponds more or less to the Italian bigness, except that in New Orleans they are more popular and find themselves at every hour of the day in city bars. Café du Monde is the main address. They are usually served for breakfast.
- Bread pudding - A dessert popular in various countries from Mexico to the Philippines. The Creole variant wants bread (as soft as a bread bread) to be soaked with a caramelized whiskey or rum sauce. You eat very hot in small slices, mostly square-shaped.
- Doberge cake - a cake from Hungary where he is known as Dobos cake. He made his first appearance in New Orleans in 1933 on the shelves of Beulah Levy Ledner, a Jew from Hungary. It's a candy cake made from alternating layers of chocolate and cream. In 1946, the Italian originator Joe Gambino bought the shop and secured the rights to the recipe and to the resale of the dessert by modifying it by inserting layers of lemon cream.
- Hubig's Pies - A sweet fried fruit filled with cream and honey. His popularity in New Orleans is due to Simon Hubig, a Basque native who used the home - made preparation method of the dessert as taught to him by his mother. Following the success of the dessert, Simon Hubig opened a factory in Fort Worth, Texas in 1922. The factory was destroyed by fire in 2012 and its reopening remains uncertain.
- Huckabuck - Hucklebuck said it was a glass of various ice-cream syrups. It may also consist of lemonade or orange juice. It is made exclusively at home but is served to the participants of the annual jazz festival.
- King cake - a cake associated with the Feast of the Epiphany which marks the start of carnival celebrations in New Orleans. It looks like a big brioche filled with cinnamon according to the traditional creole recipe. Today, instead of cinnamon, the king cake can have a filled with cream cheese, strawberry or chocolate. He is cured with various but more frequent creams of caramel in the three colors typical of carnival, green, yellow and purple red. There is also the version "Zulu King Cake" packed with chocolate and coconut because the zulu association organizing the parades is a coconut. Some New Orleans bakers also prepare for king cake at other parties like the Irish festival of St Patrick's Day of Thanksgiving and Halloween.
- Praline - Pralines are the small, stuffed chocolate candy that everyone knows and generally associated with Belgium. The New Orleans and Louisiana ones generally have a more fluid texture and are not filled with almond cream but walnuts. Because of this, they're sometimes called pecan candy.
- Sno-ball, it's the tasteless granite with sugar cane syrup. Tastes vary greatly from coffee to orange. They are in several stands around the city in the summer period alone (March-October). The first ice-crushing machine was invented in 1936 by George Ortolano, a Sicilian Erian. The Ortholan family still runs a booth with grenades, 13 SnoBall Shoppe, on the n° 4001 of the famous Magazine Street.