Old Ursuline Convent

Twelve women crossed the Atlantic in 1727 to teach, nurse the sick, and care for orphans in a colonial outpost founded nine years earlier. The Ursuline nuns arrived in New Orleans when the city was barely more than a muddy grid along the Mississippi, and they built what became the oldest surviving building in the Mississippi River Valley. Completed in 1752, the convent is the only remaining example of French colonial architecture in the French Quarter — stucco-covered brick, severely plain, with a broad hipped roof and narrow central pediment. The National Park Service calls it "the finest surviving example of French colonial public architecture in the country." It survived both Great Fires of 1788 and 1794 that destroyed the rest of the Quarter. Inside, the nuns ran integrated classrooms, educating enslaved and free women of color alongside white girls — 130 years before public school desegregation. When the convent and school moved downriver in 1824, the building became the residence of the bishop of New Orleans, later the archbishop. A portico and gatehouse were added, reorienting the entrance from the river to Chartres Street. The building now serves as the archives of the Archdiocese of New Orleans. Guided tours run Monday through Friday for a small admission fee. You're standing in front of the physical fact that held when everything else burned.