Cool Things learned at St. Louis Cemetery tour in New Orleans

Visiting St. Louis Cemetery No 1 is a highlight of any trip to New Orleans

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How could you possibly choose the best cemetery tour in New Orleans to take in a short visit? The city is so well known for extraordinary cemeteries Mark Twain once called it the City of the Dead. There are 42 official “historic” cemeteries, significant either for the architecture of the tomb or the famous people buried there, or both.

Well, here’s one way to pick: a lot of them are closed to the public. That makes it easier. Sort of!

Now before I share all the fascinating things I learned on my cemetery tour in New Orleans, I have a confession. I didn’t actually plan to go to St. Louis Cemetery No 1. Behold, a cautionary tale….

I wanted to go to Layfette Cemetery #1—home to Anne Rice’s fictional vampires and witches.

Only, Layfette No 1 is closed to the public for repairs. I found this out in the worst way—standing outside the locked gates. In my hands, tickets to a cemetery tour, scheduled to start in 10 minutes. A different cemetery. Beside me, one of my best travel buddies, a friend who is just as fussy as me about planning. She had booked us, as requested, a cemetery tour. It never occurred to me to check which cemetery. In my dreams, New Orleans cemetery = Lafayette. Reader, this will go down as one of my most Amateur Hour moves as a seasoned traveller! But I digress. One frazzled Uber ride later and we arrived at the correct cemetery, St Louis Cemetery No 1, for our tour.

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Cool Facts about St. Louis Cemetery No 1.

St Louis Cemetery No 1 is the oldest cemetery in New Orleans still in use. It opened in 1789 as the main burial ground when the city was redesigned after a fire. It’s also a National Historic Landmark.

Like most cemeteries in New Orleans, it has a unique look: The city is located below sea level, so if you bury a coffin six feet underground, there’s a good chance it will get water-logged, or even…float up to the surface! Enter the above ground tombs that have become the city’s signature. The first above-ground tombs at St. Louis Cemetery No 1 appeared around 1804.

It’s perhaps best known to tourists as the resting place of Marie Laveau: Queen of Voodoo.*

Easy Rider, the classic 1968 biker movie, shot its infamous acid trip scene at St. Louis Cemetery No 1. Without permission. The archdiocese forbid filming there after that.

In 2015, officials closed it to the public, citing an increase in vandalism. But you can still visit on a guided tour. So what’s that like?

What to expect at the guided tour at St. Louis Cemetery No 1.

St Louis Cemetery No 1 tours begin across the street at a visitor’s centre. They are very popular and run like clockwork, but staff accommodated our late arrival by putting us on the next tour. Bless them.

Our guide was perhaps not what you expect from a cemetery tour in New Orleans. In that he was a totally normal historian, not a wannabe vampire. Personally, I’d rather learn about facts than imaginary paranormal stories so this suited me just fine.

The cemetery spans just one square block. From the outside, a solid wall painted white conceals what’s inside. Our group files through the small entrance gate and I’m immediately surrounded by above ground tombs, family tombs, civic association tombs, and wall vaults. This place is packed!

We are asked to keep together, not wander off, as we are guided to the most notable tombs…

*Marie Laveau’s Tomb

Maybe yes. Maybe no. The Voodoo Queen of New Orleans is believed to be interred at St. Louis Cemetery No 1.

Marie Laveau was a priestess, herbalist and midwife who blended Catholicism and Voodoo into her own style of spiritual practise. She ran a beauty salon during the day, where she hobnobbed with the upper class, sometimes selling them her council or African gris gris amulets, or performing rituals in her home at night.

She died in 1881 with much legend around her, so there’s a lot of interest in her burial place. The going theory is that Marie Laveau is buried in St. Louis Cemetery No 1 in the vault for the family Glapion—with her second husband, their children and grandchildren.

Many devotees come to her grave, believing that even in death she can grant a wish.

We stop at the Glapion crypt. It’s small mausoleum-style tomb in bright white. Without a guide or a map you could easily walk right past it, as there is no large inscription saying “Laveau” or even “Glapion.” Just a heavy door. You have to look down to see the small plaque describing this Greek Revival tomb as the reputed burial place of Laveau.

It wasn’t always this way. You might see old photos or hear about Marie Laveau’s tomb being covered in three Xs and littered with offerings. Our guide explains that for years pilgrims would write cross marks in red on the tomb. Even running hands across it was destroying the tomb. Then on Christmas Eve 2013, staff discovered someone had snuck in and painted the tomb hot pink! It has been restored to the original whitewash, but this is a big reason you can’t wander on your own in the cemetery anymore. (Some tour guests still manage apparently, as there are three giant Xs scratched into the side.)

Our tour guide shuffles us all along quickly to the next fascinating plot….

Homer Plessy: Civil Rights Activist

One of the reasons I took a cemetery tour in New Orleans was to learn more history. This is the main reason I visit cemeteries all over the world—they are as good as any museum. And also goth.

At St. Louis Cemetery No 1. our guide stopped at the grave of Homer Plessy. Plessy was an important activist in the fight for racial equality. In 1892, the shoemaker of mixed race ancestry boarded the East Louisiana Railroad in New Orleans and sat in the “whites only” passenger car, in violation of the “Separate Car Act.”. It was a staged act of civil disobedience, designed to trigger a ticket the local civil rights group Comité des Citoyens could fight in court.

Plessy got kicked off the train, jailed for the night, and fined $500, which was the goal. He became the plaintiff in the landmark case Plessy v. Ferguson, which challenged the “separate but equal” doctrine. Unfortunately, the case went all the way to the US Supreme Court, but the court issued a 7–decision against Plessy that upheld the constitutionality of Louisiana’s train car segregation laws, a legal precedent that lasted until 1954.

Plessy’s tomb is another unassuming, narrow mausoleum of white mortar and marble, with a plaque added on the side to detail his significance. Without a tour guide, I wouldn’t have stopped here, and I would have heard Plessy’s story.

At this point I’m starting to realize that, unlike a lot of my favourite cemeteries, the graves here at St. Louis Cemetery No 1 are not particularly opulent or ornate. The beauty is in the decay, the overgrown moss. The history.

Except…

Nicolas Cage has a huge pyramid tomb

No, actor Nicolas Cage is not dead yet. But in 2010, he purchased a nine-foot tall pyramid-shaped tomb in St. Louis Cemetery No 1 as his final resting place when the day comes. The inscription on it, “omnia ab uno,” means “Everything from One.” According to our tour guide, some say it’s filled with treasure – since the IRS can’t come for assets in your grave.

After a year, your remains might be moved for someone else in your family

The family tombs can only hold so many bones.

On this cemetery tour in New Orleans is where I first heard the term “oven tombs.”

In St. Louis Cemetery No. 1. many above-ground tomb have vaults or crypts that hold the remains of multiple dead people. Nothing weird there.

In an oven tomb, when someone else in the family dies, the remains that were most recently interred fall to the bottom of the tomb, or are scooped up by the staff and moved to the bottom, depending on the design, making room for burial of newly deceased. Usually, tombs can’t be opened for at least one year and a day, so that the corpse inside is exposed to enough New Orleans summer to allow enough decomposition. (Aka, the Oven.)

Gross or genius? You decide!

Final thoughts on my cemetery tour in New Orleans

The 45-minute tour flew by fast. I spent most of it torn between listening to our tour guide’s stories (he was good guide) and peaking around corners trying to see as much as possible. I like to find my own favourite tombs, famous or not famous, and I’m not used to being restrained to a time limit.

Towards the end, as we were being escorted back to the entrance gate, one tomb standing taller than the rest caught my eye. A looming block of white, with several historical plaques all around.  This is the New Orleans Musicians’ Tomb. Cool! Owned by the Barbarin Family—“New Orleans jazz dynasty”—they now welcome other local musicians to be buried in their family tomb for free. Coco Robicheaux. Billy Diamond. Bernard “Bunchy” Johnson. These are not musical names I know. But now I do. I wish there was more time to wander like this. But I get it. A new group enters every hour and needs to be supervised. (Thanks a lot, vandals of yore!)

Know Before You Go

St. Louis Cemetery No 1 can be accessed only by guided tour, offered by the non-profit organization Save Our Cemeteries. (They are the exclusive provider of these tours.)  Cemetery tours in New Orleans are designed to preserve and protect these sacred and culturally historic spaces. Ticket money goes towards preservation, which is another great reason to take these tours.

The St Louis Cemetery No 1 tour in New Orleans costs $25 USD and is 45-minutes long. Tours leave every 15 minutes between 9am and 3:45pm from the Basin Street Station across the road.