The Historic New Orleans Voodoo Museum

Charles Massicot Gandolfo — Voodoo Charlie — opened two candlelit rooms between Bourbon and Royal Streets in 1972 and filled them with what the city had practiced but few institutions claimed: the actual material culture of Louisiana Voodoo, the syncretic tradition that arose when enslaved West Africans encountered French Catholicism in the colonial delta. New Orleans was founded in 1718 as a French port to control the Mississippi River Valley, and from the beginning it was a place of many tongues — Bulbancha in Choctaw, an indigenous trading hub for over a thousand years before Europeans arrived. What grew there was a city where spiritual systems collided and blended rather than replaced each other, and Voodoo was one of those fusions. The museum's collection includes Herbert "Coon" Singleton's altars, wishing stumps, masks, and killer sticks. Voodoo Charlie's own paintings hang throughout — scenes of rituals, Voodoo priestesses, Louisiana folklore. The Voodoo flags by Haitian artist Joseph Oldof Pierre are made of shiny silk sewn with brilliant mosaics of sequins and beads, typically 18,000 to 20,000 sequins per flag. These flags are traditionally the work of practicing vodou priests and their followers, displayed in sanctuaries and ceremonies. At the Main Altar, visitors may leave offerings and prayers to their deities of choice. A wooden kneeling board, according to legend, belonged to Marie Laveau, the 19th-century free woman of color who became the most famous Voodoo practitioner in American history. In the Gris Gris Room, a recreation of the Rougarou stands beside Baron Samedi. The room also holds ceremonial masks from Central America, fertility statues from the Ahsanti tribe, and "Passport" masks used by tribes to travel regionally. A voodoo priest on site gives readings. The museum arranges walking tours to Marie Laveau's tomb in Saint Louis Cemetery and to Congo Square. It remains one of few museums in the world dedicated entirely to Vodou art.