St. Louis Cemetery No. 1 Official Tour: The 55-Minute Guided Walk

Included

The single stated inclusion is the guided tour through St. Louis Cemetery No. 1. That covers the guide, the Cemetery Tour Access Pass you receive at check-in, and 55 minutes on the paths between the tombs. This matters more here than on any other New Orleans tour, because the cemetery has been closed to unaccompanied visitors since 1 March 2015.

Relatives of the dead, scholars and visitors with a guide registered with the Archdiocese are the only people allowed through the gates, so the pass is the thing you are really paying for.

• Guided tour through St. Louis Cemetery No. 1
• Cemetery Tour Access Pass issued at check-in
• Guide from Basin St. Station, groups up to 20
• Wheelchair accessible route, service animals allowed
• Restrooms and exhibits at Basin St. Station, which also has a gift shop

Not Included

The listing names one exclusion: gratuity for the tour guide is not included. There is no hotel pickup, and the listing states no food or drink and no entry inside any building. If you drive, public parking is available next door to Basin St. Station at hourly, daily and overnight rates, which is a separate cost.

Lidded bottled water is allowed on the tour, but food is not.

• Gratuity for the guide
• Hotel pickup or drop-off
• Food and drink
• Parking next door, if you drive

What You Might Pay on the Day

Beyond the tip, the realistic extras are parking and refreshments at the visitor centre, which has a gift shop. There is no separate cemetery admission to pay, because the $25 ticket and the access pass cover the gate. The listing shows the day option and the After Dark Night Tour at the same 55 minutes.

Check-in at Basin St. Station

You enter the Basin St. Station Visitor Information Center on St. Louis Street at Basin Street and find the Cemetery Tours Desk. Staff check you in 15 minutes before departure and hand over your Cemetery Tour Access Pass. The building holds restrooms, refreshments, exhibits about New Orleans and a gift shop, which is useful if you arrive early.

The station is within walking distance of the French Quarter, the City Sightseeing double-decker stops at Stop 5, and drivers take I-10 Exit 235A.

The Paths Between the Tombs

St. Louis Cemetery No. 1 is the oldest cemetery in New Orleans, dated to 1789, and it replaced the earlier St. Peter Cemetery after the 1788 fire. The high water table made in-ground burial unreliable, so almost everything here is above ground, and by the 1820s oven tombs and family tombs were the norm. The block holds individual mausoleums, oven vaults for people of modest means and society tombs in a maze of narrow lanes, with roughly 8,400 memorials listed on Find a Grave.

Your guide walks the paths between them and explains the rules as you go: no touching, sitting or leaning on tombs, and no rubbing, marking or leaving items on them.

The Tomb of Marie Laveau

The best known stop is the Glapion family crypt, where the Voodoo queen Marie Laveau is generally believed to rest in the middle vault. She was born on 10 September 1801 and died on 15 June 1881, and by the 1830s she led a multiracial religious community, holding weekly ceremonies at her home and large St. John's Eve gatherings on Lake Pontchartrain that drew thousands. Tradition says visitors draw three X marks on the tomb, turn three times and make a wish, and the marks have kept reappearing.

Workers found the tomb painted pink in 2013, and that vandalism helped trigger the access rule, so never mark the tomb. The Archdiocese said unlicensed guides had been handing out markers.

The Tomb of Homer Plessy

The other named stop is the Debergue-Blanco family tomb where Homer Plessy is buried, marked with a bronze plaque describing his significance. On 7 June 1892 Plessy sat in a whites-only car of the East Louisiana Railroad and was arrested, and the Supreme Court ruled 7 to 1 against him in Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896.

Louisiana granted him a posthumous pardon on 5 January 2022. The contrast between the two tombs is the point of the tour, a folk legend and a civil rights landmark on the same block.

Who Else Is on the Block

The listing names Laveau and Plessy and says more. Other burials on the block include chess champion Paul Morphy, who won the First American Chess Congress in 1857 and died at 47, lies in the family tomb. Etienne de Bore, the first mayor of New Orleans under US rule and the man who granulated sugar in 1795, is here, as is Bernard de Marigny, who subdivided his plantation into Faubourg Marigny and gave the dice game that became craps its local name.

Architect Benjamin Latrobe died of yellow fever in 1820 and was buried here, and two pyramid tombs stand in the cemetery, the Varney family tomb and the Nicolas Cage pyramid, nine feet tall with the Latin inscription Omnia Ab Uno. The After Dark Night Tour is also 55 minutes.

If You Want Scares, Look Elsewhere

The operator bills the walk as history and calls the night version not a ghost tour. Travellers who want the haunted version of New Orleans should book the French Quarter ghost, voodoo and vampire walking tour instead, a 1.5 to 2 hour walk past the LaLaurie Mansion and the Ursuline Convent for $33. Those who want cemeteries and ghosts together after dark, from a bus seat, have the Cemetery and Ghost BYOB Bus Tour at $30, a 2 hour night ride into actual graveyards.

Practical Limits to Know Before Booking

The route is wheelchair accessible and suitable for all fitness levels, and infants and small children can ride in a pram or stroller, so families are fine. The real limits are the clock and the rules. The walk runs rain or shine and food is not allowed inside the cemetery.

Tickets are valid only for your scheduled departure, so miss your slot and you miss the gate. The tour is in English and the listing states no other languages, which rules out non-English speakers. The listing names no bar stop.

The Gates Are Closed to Walk-ins

Since 1 March 2015, entry to St. Louis Cemetery No. 1 has been limited to relatives of the dead, scholars and visitors with a guide registered with the Archdiocese. The rule came after vandalism that included someone painting the reputed Laveau tomb pink, along with littering, tomb break-ins and theft of security equipment. You cannot buy a ticket at the gate and wander.

A DIY visit means standing outside the walls, which is free but shows you very little of a cemetery that fills its entire block with tombs.

• Unaccompanied entry has been barred since 1 March 2015
• Only Archdiocese-registered guides may bring visitors
• Another cemetery with guided-only access is Lafayette Cemetery No. 1, which reopened for guided tours only in 2026

What the Guide Adds, and Where You Can Go Alone

What you buy for $25 is access, plus the stories. A registered guide takes you through the maze of vaults to the Laveau and Plessy tombs, keeps you inside the rules, and explains why the dead rest above ground. Alone in this city you can see plenty for free, from the LaLaurie Mansion to the haunts gathered in the guide to haunted places in New Orleans, and the St. Louis Cemetery No. 1 and Marie Laveau tomb guides cover the history if you just want to read.

But at this one site, the official tour is not one option among several, it is the way in. The overview of New Orleans cemetery tours puts it in context.