Qualla: Saint Louis Cemetery

Saint Louis Cemetery: Introduction

Fri, 06 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Clark Mills, Public domain. In 2010, Nicolas Cage purchased a nine-foot-tall pyramid-shaped tomb in Saint Louis Cemetery No. 1. It sits among weathered 18th-century vaults in a graveyard that spans just one square block yet holds many thousands of the dead. The pyramid is the newest and most conspicuous monument in a cemetery that has been in continuous use since 1789, but it is far from the strangest thing here. A few rows away lies the Glapion family crypt, believed to hold the remains of Marie Laveau, the most famous Voodoo priestess in American history. Nearby rests Paul Morphy, one of the earliest world champions of chess. The Saint Louis Cemeteries of New Orleans, three in number, are not merely places of burial. They are the city's autobiography, written in brick, plaster, and marble above the waterlogged ground.

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Image: Clark Mills | Public domain

Saint Louis Cemetery: Cities of the Dead

Fri, 06 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Headsillroll, CC BY-SA 3.0. New Orleans buries its dead above ground out of necessity. The city's high water table, barely a foot or two below the surface in many places, made traditional interment impractical from the earliest colonial days. Coffins would float back to the surface during heavy rains. The s...

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Image: Headsillroll | CC BY-SA 3.0

Saint Louis Cemetery: Pirates, Pawns, and Priestesses

Fri, 06 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Peter Fitzgerald, OpenStreetMap [1], CC BY-SA 2.0. The roster of residents in Cemetery No. 1 reads like a casting call for a sprawling historical drama. Etienne de Bore, the wealthy pioneer of the sugar industry and first mayor of New Orleans, lies here. So does Homer Plessy, the plaintiff in the landmark 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson ...

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Image: Peter Fitzgerald, OpenStreetMap [1] | CC BY-SA 2.0

Saint Louis Cemetery: Three Grounds, Three Centuries

Fri, 06 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit (WT-en) Benjiho at English Wikivoyage, Public domain. Cemetery No. 2, consecrated in 1823 three blocks behind No. 1 along Claiborne Avenue, expanded the burial ground as the city grew. Its residents include jazz and rhythm-and-blues musicians Danny Barker and Ernie K-Doe, along with Andre Cailloux, an African-American Union hero kil...

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Image: (WT-en) Benjiho at English Wikivoyage | Public domain

Saint Louis Cemetery: Standing Through the Flood

Fri, 06 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit NOLAskip, CC BY-SA 3.0. Hurricane Katrina in 2005 tested the cemeteries as it tested everything in New Orleans. Cemetery No. 2 received minor flooding, and when the waters receded its tombs appeared virtually untouched save for a brownish waterline staining every structure. Cemetery No. 3, closer to the...

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Image: NOLAskip | CC BY-SA 3.0

Saint Louis Cemetery: Resting Above, Remembered Below

Fri, 06 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Infrogmation of New Orleans, CC BY-SA 3.0. Together, the three Saint Louis Cemeteries contain the compressed story of a city shaped by French and Spanish colonial rule, the sugar and cotton trades, the Civil War, Reconstruction, the jazz age, and the civil rights movement. The vaults hold formerly enslaved people beside f...

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Image: Infrogmation of New Orleans | CC BY-SA 3.0