Qualla: Hotel Monteleone

Hotel Monteleone: Introduction

Fri, 06 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Chris.j.cook, CC BY-SA 3.0. The bar is moving. Not metaphorically -- the 25 seats of the Carousel Piano Bar & Lounge actually rotate, turning on 2,000 large steel rollers at a constant rate of one revolution every fifteen minutes. Installed in 1949 inside the Hotel Monteleone on Royal Street, the Carousel Bar has been gently spinning patrons past the same mirrored columns and painted circus panels for more than seven decades. It is the only revolving bar in New Orleans, and it sits inside the only high-rise building in the interior of the French Quarter. The hotel that houses it has been owned by the same family since a Sicilian immigrant named Antonio Monteleone purchased a small lodging house on the corner of Royal and Iberville streets in 1886.

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Image: Chris.j.cook | CC BY-SA 3.0

Hotel Monteleone: From Sicily to Royal Street

Fri, 06 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Jeffrey Schwartz, CC BY 2.0. Antonio Monteleone arrived in New Orleans from Sicily around 1880, part of the massive wave of Italian immigration that would transform the French Quarter into "Little Palermo." Six years later, he bought his first hotel. When the neighboring Commercial Hotel came up for sale, he...

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Image: Jeffrey Schwartz | CC BY 2.0

Hotel Monteleone: The Writers' Hotel

Fri, 06 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Kenneth C. Zirkel, CC BY-SA 4.0. Ernest Hemingway made a point of staying at the Monteleone when visiting New Orleans. So did Tennessee Williams, who set scenes in The Rose Tattoo and Orpheus Descending at the hotel. William Faulkner, the other towering figure of Southern literature, was also a regular guest. Th...

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Image: Kenneth C. Zirkel | CC BY-SA 4.0

Hotel Monteleone: The Swan Room and the Spinning Stage

Fri, 06 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit angela n. from Washington, DC, CC BY 2.0. During the 1950s and 1960s, the Carousel Bar doubled as the entrance to the Swan Room, a nightclub where Liberace and Louis Prima performed to packed houses. The hotel itself was undergoing its most dramatic transformation during this period. In 1954, the original 1886 building w...

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Image: angela n. from Washington, DC | CC BY 2.0

Hotel Monteleone: Lights, Camera, Monteleone

Fri, 06 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Hunter Desportes, CC BY 2.0. Hollywood discovered the Hotel Monteleone long after the literary world had claimed it. The 1999 film Double Jeopardy, starring Ashley Judd and Tommy Lee Jones, transformed the Carousel Bar into an Armani shop for filming. Glory Road used the lobby as a stand-in for a fancy hotel...

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Image: Hunter Desportes | CC BY 2.0