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Holiday Tours

The Historic New Orleans Collection is pleased to once again offer Holiday Home Tours of the Williams Residence starting December 3.  The two-story brick townhouse, built in 1889 and restored in the 1940s, was owned by the founders of THNOC.  During the holidays, the residence, which is filled with antiques and other objets d’art collected by the couple in their wide travels, is festively adorned with some of the Williamses’ original decorations, including a beautiful Christmas tree with vintage ornaments and family photos of the Williamses from 1956 through 1961.  The cost for the tour is $5/person and free for THNOC members.  533 Royal St.

Cemetery Tours

No visit to New Orleans is complete without a tour of the city’s oldest outdoor museums, its historic cemeteries.  Often called CITIES OF THE DEAD, these cemeteries are noted for their unique, above ground tombs.  The tombs serve as monuments to the eighteenth, nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and they, like the cemeteries themselves, are a major part of the city’s unique heritage.  Save Our Cemeteries, Inc. (SOC) offers authentic, accurate, guided tours through two of New Orleans’ oldest and most historically significant cemeteries:  Lafayette No. 1 and St. Louis No. 1.  Click here to visit the organization’s website.  Call 1-888-721-7493 for more info.

Literary Tours

New Orleans is literary a city as much as any other if not more so.  In the world of literature, it is as much a character as it is a setting.  If you are the type of traveler who finds this interesting, then you would also be interested in taking a tour with Dr. Kenneth Holditch, a retired University of New Orleans professor and literary historian.  He combines his knowledge with a flair for storytelling to make the French Quarter as it is known in literature jump off the page.  A two-hour walk with dear Dr. Holditch is less “class lecture” and more “travel to another world.”  It is the kind of tour that satisfies the smart traveler’s intellect and esprit de corps.  At $20 per person, it is also well-priced.  Reservations for Holditch’s Literary Tours must be made in advance and are only given for groups of three or more.  For more information and to book a tour call 504-949-9805.

The Hotel Monteleone offers a new Literary History Walking Tour to highlight the famous authors who impacted its story and helped it to earn the distinction of Literary Landmark, an honor bestowed on only three hotels in the country.  Led by local historian and writer, Glenn De Villier, the Hotel Monteleone’s two-hour tour is available on Tuesdays at 10:00 a. m. and Saturdays at 3:00 p. m.  Beginning and ending in the famous Carousel Bar, the tour divulges the literary history of the Hotel Monteleone and its famous literary patrons including Eudora Welty, Tennessee Williams, William Faulkner and Ernest Hemingway, among others.  The walking tour costs $5 for hotel guests and $27 for the general public.  For more information on the Literary History Walking Tour and to make reservations, please visit http://hotelmonteleone.com/walkingtour.

National Park Service Free French Quarter Tour

The French Quarter Visitor Center, which is operated by the National Park Service, offers free tours daily.  Every day at 9:30 a. m., rangers lead riverfront history walks to the Mississippi River, just over the levee from the visitor center, to share the story of how the city began.  25 free tickets per tour are given out beginning at 9:00 a. m.  Each person wanting a ticket must pick up his or her own ticket.  Walks last about an hour.  No reservations are taken.  First-come, first-served.  Find the visitor center at 419 Decatur St.  Call 504-589-2636 ext. 1 for more info.

Tour the Treme

The New Orleans African-American Museum located at 1418 Governor Nicholls Street offers group tours of the Treme in partnership with the Preservation Resource Center.  On the tour, you will “discover the history of Creole architectures, second line parades, jazz music, and more.”  With your guide, you will visit Congo Square, hear about the African origins of the popular shotgun house style of architecture, and learn about Mardi Gras Indians.”  This is more than a historical tour.  It is a window into the world of New Orleans culture as it is lived today.  Call 504-566-1136 for more info.

You can also tour the Treme with French Quarter Phantoms Ghost Tours.  On the tour, you will explore the history of Jazz and learn all about one of the oldest and most vibrant neighborhoods in the United States; originally settled by Creoles and Free Persons of Color, Treme’ was the origin of the Civil Rights Movement.  Please note that this is a historical tour, not a ghost tour.