Introduce yourself first to the French Quarter, the site of New Orleans’s original settlement. It grew from a few houses in a clearing hacked out of riverside palmetto groves into the city’s architectural centrepiece and cultural heart.

This fabled 6-by-13-block rectangle of history and culture along the Mississippi River is fro most of the world synonymous with New Orleans, the most widely known of its diverse districts and neighbourhoods. The French Quarter, or Vieux Carre, was laid out not long after the French founded the city in 1718 and , using a grid pattern, drafted a formal street plan.

The historical heart of New Orleans, the French Quarter was originally enclosed by ramparts. Fires swept through in 1788 and again in 1794, razing much of the original French Creole architecture. Under Spanish rule at the time, the city’s replacement buildings took on a Spanish flair, complete with the beloved wrought-iron galleries, shuttered doors, and rear courtyards that have become so quintessentially Vieux Carre.