New Orleans 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?
Free cancellation
For a full refund, cancel at least 24 hours before the scheduled departure time.
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Duration 2 hours
Check availability to see start times.
Live tour guide
English
Key facts
What's included
Included
- Expert Guide with ancestral ties to New Orleans sin and salvation
Not included
- Snacks
- Alcoholic Beverages
- Tips are appreciated but never mandatory.
Itinerary
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Stop 1
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.
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Stop 2
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.
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Stop 3
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.
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Stop 4
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.
Meeting point & pickup
Meet at the starting point
Meet in front of May Baileys place.
Open in Google MapsCancellation & confirmation
Free cancellation
For a full refund, cancel at least 24 hours before the scheduled departure time.
- 100% refund if cancelled at least 1 day(s) before
- 0% refund if cancelled 0–1 day(s) before
- May be cancelled for bad weather
- May be cancelled if there are not enough travelers
Instant confirmation
Your booking is confirmed immediately after checkout.
From $35.00 per person
- Free cancellation
- Secure checkout with our booking partner
