Frenchmen Street

Six blocks of live music clubs in the Faubourg Marigny — the street where New Orleans musicians actually play. While Bourbon Street became a tourist engine, Frenchmen Street evolved in the 1980s as the place locals went to hear what was actually happening. The Spotted Cat Music Club, d.b.a., the Maison, and the Blue Nile anchor a scene that runs from sunset to 3 a.m. seven nights a week, much of it with no cover charge. The street was named for six Frenchmen executed after leading an uprising following France's cession of Louisiana to Spain in the Seven Years' War. The neighborhood itself is the Faubourg Marigny — once the plantation of Bernard de Marigny, a wealthy Creole who subdivided the property in 1806. Many of the houses here are more than a century old; some older than that. You'll see Creole cottages — single-story, steeply pitched roofs, symmetrical four-opening façades set close to the street — and Creole townhouses, two to four stories with iron balconies and side-gabled roofs. Both styles reflect the city's layered colonial past, one French and Spanish, the other a post-fire adaptation from 1788. Hurricane Katrina left Frenchmen Street relatively unscathed in 2005 — the neighborhood sits on some of the highest ground in the city. In the recovery period, New Orleans designated the street an official arts and entertainment district. After the Saints' Super Bowl win in 2010, Frenchmen Street hosted one of the largest celebrations in the city's history. HBO's *Tremé* filmed here. Walk from the French Quarter — it's just across Esplanade. The Frenchmen Art Market operates nightly under a canopy at 619 Frenchmen, selling work by local artists. This is where the city's musicians still make their living, and where you can hear what that sounds like.