The New Orleans Garden District Tour: Private Mansion, Lafayette Cemetery Tour & Local Praline Maker

Your historic Garden District Tour begins on a sweet note with a behind-the-scenes visit to an old praline-makers shop. As you and your group of no more than 20 people see how this iconic Southern candy is made, your expert local guide will explain how it was brought to New Orleans from Europe before giving you one to taste hot out of the copper pots.

Next, you’ll hop onto a historic street car with all-inclusive tickets and zip down St. Charles Ave. to the Garden District. This area of grand mansions and wide, shady streets is home to some of the most striking pre-Civil-War architecture in America as well as a slew of celebrity homes. Your guide will introduce you to the neighborhood with a full Garden District tour as you see the grand mansions built by wealthy plantation-owners and industrialists, now owned by famous people like Beyoncé and Sandra Bullock.

Along the way, you’ll swing through one of America’s most unique graveyards, Lafayette Cemetery No. 1, to see famous family-plots and spooky old mausoleums. Your Lafayette Cemetery tour will also include some interesting information on the practical difficulties of running a cemetery below sea-level.

The highlight of your Garden District Tour is a visit to the Elms Mansion, one of the best-preserved old Southern mansions in America. As you explore the opulent rooms, your guide will tell you about the families who built these stately residences and the decadent world they created in New Orleans before the Civil War. Your Garden District Tour ends in the Mansion’s beautiful garden with a long-standing Southern tradition: an ice cold glass of lemonade or sweet tea.