A Guide to New Orleans Cemeteries: Tombs, Legends, and Hidden Histories of the Crescent City

The first surprise is the brightness.

In New Orleans, the cemeteries do not hide the dead beneath quiet lawns. They raise them into view. Whitewashed tombs catch the Louisiana sun. Wall vaults line narrow paths. Iron gates, marble tablets, crosses, angels, and weathered family names turn burial grounds into miniature cities of memory.

A Guide to New Orleans Cemeteries is a clear, respectful, and richly detailed companion to the tombs, legends, and hidden histories of the Crescent City. Blending accessible history with visitor guidance, Gavin Benoit explains why above-ground burial became so closely associated with New Orleans, how family tombs and society tombs worked, what cemetery symbols mean, and how water, faith, disease, class, race, architecture, and memory shaped these remarkable landscapes.

From St. Louis Cemetery No. 1 and the tomb associated with Marie Laveau to Lafayette Cemetery No. 1, Metairie Cemetery, Greenwood, Holt Cemetery, Charity Hospital Cemetery, and other lesser-known burial grounds, this book looks beyond the usual tourist legends to reveal the people, traditions, and preservation struggles behind the city’s famous “cities of the dead.”

Designed for travelers, history lovers, cemetery walkers, and armchair readers alike, this guide offers practical context, respectful etiquette, notable burials, suggested itineraries, and a glossary of cemetery terms. It is not a ghost story, though legends appear. It is a guide to seeing New Orleans through one of its most revealing landscapes.

A historical guide to New Orleans cemeteries, above-ground tombs, cemetery legends, and the hidden burial traditions of the Crescent City.