New Orleans Cemetery Tours: Which Tour Gets You Inside

The Comparison at a Glance

The table below compares the three cemetery-focused tours sold on this site: the official walk inside St. Louis Cemetery No. 1 and two night buses. Figures come straight from the tour listings, with no rounding and no added fees. Only the walking tour includes entry to a cemetery.

The buses visit graveyards or the cities of the dead after dark, but their listings name no specific stop and state no entry ticket. Links in the table go to each tour's card.

St. Louis Cemetery No. 1 Official Walking Tour

This is the tour that actually gets you through the gate. It costs $25 and lasts 55 minutes, run by Basin St. Station with groups of up to 20 led by a locally licensed guide. The route follows the paths between the tombs of St. Louis Cemetery No. 1, including the tombs of Marie Laveau and Homer Plessy. Entry is included: you receive a Cemetery Tour Access Pass at check-in, and that pass is the only way in for visitors without family buried there.

You meet at the Cemetery Tours Desk inside the Basin St. Station Visitor Information Center at St. Louis Street and Basin Street, directly across from the cemetery. Check in 15 minutes before your tour. Day departures run every 15 minutes from 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., and after-dark tours run on select nights. The exact start times show when you check availability for your date.

Know the rules before you go. No touching, sitting or leaning on tombs. No food inside, though lidded bottled water is allowed. No rubbing, marking or leaving items on tombs, which includes the three-X ritual at the Laveau tomb. Only ADA service animals are allowed, tours run rain or shine, and the route is wheelchair accessible but has uneven surfaces. Personal photos are fine. Professional photography or filming needs prior written permission from the Archdiocese. The one thing not included is the gratuity for your guide. This is a history tour, not a ghost tour. See the full details on the official walking tour page.

Dead of Night Ghosts and Cemetery Bus Tour

The Dead of Night tour costs $45 and runs 2 hours on an air-conditioned bus, operated by Haunted History Tours, a company that has been in business since the mid-1990s. Departures are at 7 p.m. or 9:30 p.m. from 740 N Rampart Street, and you should arrive 20 minutes before departure.

Read the listing carefully, because it is honest about what it is. The route is described as a night-time bus ride to haunted locations and the cities of the dead, across a street once called the port of missing men. There is no stop list, no named cemetery and no statement that you go inside one. Entry is not stated in the listing. St. Louis Cemetery No. 1 admits only visitors with a registered guide. What you are buying is a licensed guide telling stories on an air-conditioned bus at night.

Group size is not stated. Food, drinks and gratuities are not included. English is the tour language and no minimum age is stated. Free cancellation is available up to 24 hours ahead. If your priority is going inside St. Louis No. 1, book the official walking tour instead. Details for this bus are on the Dead of Night bus tour page.

Cemetery and Ghost BYOB Bus Tour

The GhostRiders bus costs $30 and runs 2 hours, with departures at 5 p.m., 8 p.m. and 11 p.m. from VooDoo Tavern and Poboys at 1140 Decatur Street. Check-in opens 30 minutes before tour time, so plan to arrive early and grab your seat.

The BYOB part is real. You bring your own drinks, and the legal drinking age in Louisiana is 21. The listing describes a night ride to actual graveyards with live commentary, and the listing gives room for up to 56 people. As with the Dead of Night bus, the listing names no specific cemetery and states no entry, so you should not book it expecting to walk between the tombs. St. Louis Cemetery No. 1 admits only visitors with a registered guide.

The age listing breaks down as children 6 to 11 and adults 12 to 99, with infants on an adult's lap. Wheelchair access is not stated, so call ahead if you need it. Gratuities are not included. Free cancellation is available up to 24 hours ahead. The tour also has an 11 p.m. departure. Full details are on the BYOB bus tour page.

St. Louis Cemetery No. 1: Registered Tours Only

St. Louis Cemetery No. 1 was founded in 1789 and is the oldest cemetery in the city. It sits on Basin Street about 0.5 miles from Jackson Square, a ten to fifteen minute walk, and fills one square block bounded by Basin, St. Louis, Conti and Treme streets. The dead lie in above-ground vaults because the high water table made in-ground burial unreliable. Oven tombs and family tombs were the norm by the 1820s, and a tomb cannot be reopened for at least a year and a day.

Since 1 March 2015, entry is limited to relatives of the dead, scholars and visitors with a guide registered with the Archdiocese. The rule came after vandalism that included pink paint thrown on the reputed tomb of Marie Laveau, tomb break-ins and people camping on the grounds. Guides who visit occasionally pay $40 for a one-time pass and regular tour companies pay $4,500 to $5,400 a year. The official walking tour is the bookable option on this site that includes the access pass. For the tombs, the burials and the Laveau dispute in full, read the guide to St. Louis Cemetery No. 1 and the page on the Marie Laveau tomb.

Lafayette Cemetery No. 1: Guided Tours Only, and Not Sold Here

Lafayette Cemetery No. 1 in the Garden District was founded in 1833 and holds about 1,100 family tombs and around 7,000 burials on a single city block. It closed in 2019 over vandalism, restoration needs and crowding from large tour groups, and it reopened after seven years for guided tours only.

The tours are run by Save Our Cemeteries, part of the Preservation Resource Center, with six sessions a day and groups of 16 or fewer. No price is confirmed here, so check the Preservation Resource Center page before you go. This tour is not sold on this site. Accommodation is made for people with loved ones buried there. If you want to see the neighborhood, the cemetery sits across the street from Commander's Palace and is reached by the St. Charles streetcar. The history is in the Lafayette Cemetery No. 1 guide.

St. Louis No. 2 and No. 3, and What the Night Buses Claim

St. Louis Cemetery No. 2 was founded in 1823 and holds Dominique You, Danny Barker, Ernie K-Doe and Henriette DeLille. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1975. St. Louis No. 3 opened in 1854 about 2 miles from the French Quarter on Esplanade Avenue near Bayou St. John. The record lists no bookable tour on this site that enters either one.

Now the night buses. The Dead of Night tour listing says haunted locations and the cities of the dead, with no stop list and no entry stated. The BYOB GhostRiders bus listing says actual graveyards after dark, again with no named cemetery and no entry stated. Neither listing promises to put you inside any wall. If walking among the tombs matters to you, the official $25 walk into St. Louis No. 1 is the only tour here that guarantees it. The city also runs six municipal cemeteries, most open weekdays 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. and Saturdays 8:30 a.m. to 3 p.m., closed Sundays, for anyone who wants to look at burial grounds without a ticket.

The Official Walk in Daylight

The St. Louis Cemetery No. 1 Official Walking Tour runs day departures every 15 minutes from 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., according to the listing. It costs $25, lasts 55 minutes and takes groups of up to 20. Check-in is 15 minutes early at the Cemetery Tours Desk inside Basin St. Station. This walk is billed as history rather than a ghost tour, so daytime works well. The cemetery sits about half a mile from Jackson Square, a ten to fifteen minute walk.

The same tour also runs after-dark versions on select nights. The listing does not name those nights, so you choose a time slot when you check availability. Every departure, day or night, enters through a guide registered with the Archdiocese, which has been the only way in since the access rule of 1 March 2015.

The Night Buses

Both bus tours run after dark and both are listed as visiting cemeteries. The New Orleans Dead of Night Ghosts and Cemetery Bus Tour costs $45 and lasts 2 hours on an air-conditioned bus, with departures at 7 p.m. and 9:30 p.m. from N Rampart Street. Arrive 20 minutes early. The listing gives no stop list, so it does not name a specific cemetery or promise entry to one.

The Cemetery and Ghost BYOB Bus Tour in New Orleans costs $30, lasts 2 hours and holds up to 56 people, with departures at 5 p.m., 8 p.m. and 11 p.m. from VooDoo Tavern and Poboys on Decatur Street. Check-in is 30 minutes before tour time. Its listing says the bus visits actual graveyards after dark. Bring your own drinks in unbreakable containers, since glass is banned on the street, and note the legal drinking age in Louisiana is 21.

Heat, Sunlight and Seasons

August in New Orleans is hot and humid, so a midday cemetery walk can be hard work. Carry water, since lidded bottled water is the only drink allowed inside St. Louis Cemetery No. 1. Sunset shapes the evening options.

It falls at about 5:23 PM in January, 7:09 PM in March, 8:03 PM in June, 6:31 PM in October and 5:03 PM in December. The 5 p.m. departure falls close to sunset in winter. The Atlantic hurricane season runs from 1 June to 30 November.

The official walk and the Dead of Night bus run rain or shine, and the BYOB bus offers cancellation for bad weather.

Why the Dead Lie Above Ground

The high water table, fed by the Mississippi, Lake Borgne and Lake Pontchartrain, made in-ground burial unreliable. The answer was to build up. Most graves in St. Louis Cemetery No. 1 are above-ground vaults from the 18th and 19th centuries.

Oven tombs, called fours, and family tombs were the norm by the 1820s. The cemetery holds individual mausoleums, oven vaults built for people of modest means, and society tombs packed into a maze across a single block.

A Year and a Day

Space is tight inside a family tomb, so a tomb cannot be reopened for at least a year and a day. After that wait, earlier remains move down into a receiving vault, called a caveau, at the bottom of the tomb, and the next coffin goes in above. This reuse is why a single tomb can hold generations.

More than 84 people are interred in the family crypt associated with Marie Laveau, including about 25 family members. Lafayette Cemetery No. 1 fits about 1,100 family tombs and around 7,000 burials onto one city block.

The Names to Look For

In St. Louis Cemetery No. 1 the official route passes the tombs of Marie Laveau and Homer Plessy, plaintiff in Plessy v. Ferguson, who is buried in the Debergue-Blanco family tomb behind a bronze plaque. Chess champion Paul Morphy rests in his family tomb, and the cemetery also holds the first mayor of New Orleans, Etienne de Bore, and Bernard de Marigny, who gave the city streets named Desire and Duels. Two pyramid tombs stand in the cemetery, the Varney family tomb near the entrance and the Nicolas Cage pyramid, nine feet tall and marked Omnia Ab Uno. Architect Benjamin Latrobe, who died of yellow fever in 1820, is buried here too.

The history of each cemetery is covered in the guides to St. Louis Cemetery No. 1 and Lafayette Cemetery No. 1. In Lafayette No. 1, look for Judge John Howard Ferguson of Plessy v. Ferguson and Confederate general Harry T. Hays, who commanded the Louisiana Tigers.

Do Not Mark the Tombs

The rules on the official tour are no touching, sitting or leaning on tombs, and no rubbing, marking or leaving items on tombs. Food is not allowed inside, though lidded bottled water is. The X marks you may see on the white plaster of the Laveau tomb come from the decades-old three-X ritual, where visitors draw three Xs, turn three times, knock and call out a wish.

Someone covered the reputed Laveau tomb with pink paint in one vandalism incident, and the Archdiocese said unlicensed guides had handed out markers and instructions on how to mark tombs. That vandalism wave is what led to the 2015 closure to unaccompanied visitors.

Photography, Stay With the Guide, Respect

Personal photos are allowed on the official tour, while professional photography or filming needs prior written permission from the Archdiocese. Stay with your guide at all times. In St. Louis Cemetery No. 1 the only legal entry is with a registered guide, and you receive your Cemetery Tour Access Pass at check-in. Tickets are valid for the scheduled departure time only, so arrive 15 minutes early. Only ADA service animals are allowed, and the paths are wheelchair accessible but uneven.

Remember that families still visit. Lafayette Cemetery No. 1 makes accommodation for visitors who have loved ones buried there, and its tours cap groups at 16 or fewer. Inside the walls are real graves of real people. Keep your voice down near mourners, leave nothing behind, and treat every tomb as someone's property.