Sin and Salvation A Guided Walking Tour

For nearly three centuries, New Orleans has lived somewhere between the sacred and the scandalous. Sin & Salvation explores the complicated relationship between faith, vice, morality, power, forgiveness, and reinvention in a city that has never fit neatly into anyone’s definition of respectable. Beginning at Jackson Square, guests look toward St. Louis Cathedral while hearing of notorious Gallatin Street and Bricktop, then enter the religious heart of the city through Père Antoine, the Ursulines, Marie Laveau, Henriette Delille, and the Sisters of the Holy Family. Mardi Gras, Lent, temperance, Storyville, jazz, sex-work, and the lives of Josie Arlington, Lulu White, and Norma Wallace reveal a city where sin and salvation have always existed side by side. We begin looking at a cathedral while talking about sin. We end seated in a former bordello talking about salvation, asking: Who gets to define sin, what does salvation look like, and who gets to be saved?

1. 1

   St. Louis Cathedral

   15 min

   Cross into the religious heart of the French Quarter to explore Père Antoine, Catholic New Orleans, confession, forgiveness, and the Ursuline sisters, whose work in education, healthcare, and care for vulnerable people helped shape the early city.

2. 2

   French Quarter

   1 hour

   Explore Marie Laveau’s Catholic faith alongside Louisiana Voodoo and consider a spiritual world in which Catholic and Afro-Creole traditions did not necessarily require choosing one over the other. Continue through the Quarter while exploring temperance, drinking, gambling, prostitution, morality campaigns, and the repeated attempts to make New Orleans behave. Discover why the city often responded to vice not by eliminating it, but by moving it.

3. 3

   Storyville District

   15 min

   Enter the world of Storyville through two of its most famous madams. Compare Josie Arlington and Lulu White while examining prostitution, race, the Blue Books, female power, exploitation, wealth, reinvention, and the complicated meaning of respectability.

4. 4

   May Baily's Place

   30 min

   End the walking portion inside a former nineteenth-century bordello. Hear the story of May Baily, explore prostitution before Storyville, finish the remarkable life of Norma Wallace, and sit together for a final discussion about morality, forgiveness, reinvention, saints, sinners, and the soul of New Orleans.

• Service animals allowed
• Public transportation options are available nearby
• Suitable for all physical fitness levels

For a full refund, cancel at least 24 hours before the scheduled departure time.