The festive Bourbon Street has been crying since the early hours of 2025. The joyful hubbub was followed on the night of the New Year by cries of terror and the sirens of the police and ambulances. The crazy car that drove into the crowd, killed and injured people, plunged the noisy thoroughfare into astonishment and fear.
In the heart of New Orleans, the most French of American cities, Bourbon Street is this legendary street lined with colorful houses and wrought iron balconies, which extends from Canal Street to Esplanade Avenue, crossing the Vieux Carré, the French history. Bourbon Street never sleeps, comes alive especially at night, just steps from the Mississippi River.
A piece of French history
It is a street almost as old as the 1718 founding of New Orleans by Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne de Bienville. Three years later, the French engineer Adrien de Pauger, who had drawn up the city’s plans, named this artery Bourbon, in homage to the French royal family.
The French Quarter of New Year’s drama is the oldest and most visited in the legendary Louisiana city. It is home to some of the city’s best restaurants, museums and concert halls. In Vieux Carré, so many street names that are familiar to us: Bourbon, Lafayette, Toulouse, Lafitte, Chartres or Napoléon, like so many signatures of the French heritage of the southern city.
Popular neighborhood for the LGBTQ+ community
Bourbon Street tells so many stories, including that of the famous pirate Jean Lafitte, officially a blacksmith, who established his workshop at 941 Bourbon Street, today the address of Lafitte’s Blacksmith Shop, an institution, and one of the oldest bars in the UNITED STATES.
The area is popular with the LGBTQ+ community, with iconic bars, restaurants and entertainment venues. The Bourbon Street Pub and Parade, located in a typical building with a panoramic balcony, is a must.
Each late summer, the French Quarter and Bourbon Street become the beating heart of Southern Decadence, one of the most popular LGBTQ+ festivals in the world. Celebrated over a few days, it attracts visitors from all corners of the globe and helps make New Orleans a vibrant and inclusive destination.
Tensions
Cool, festive, the French Quarter is not free from tensions. Since the 1960s, it has experienced several waves of gentrification, becoming less and less popular and more and more the subject of real estate speculation. It sparked lively debates between tourism promoters, concerned with economic development, and heritage defenders, committed to preserving the district.
Vieux Carré is not known for its insecurity. But in 2017, the authorities of New Orleans became aware of the vulnerability of this very busy district, in particular by drawing lessons from the truck attack perpetrated on the Promenade des Anglais in Nice on July 14, 2016.
In this context, the City is undertaking the modernization of the pedestrian terminal system in the neighborhood, a project aimed at strengthening safety measures, with work planned until February 2025.
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