The Presbytère is the mirror twin of the Cabildo on the other side of St. Louis Cathedral — a Spanish Colonial building completed in 1813 that now houses two of the best museum exhibitions in Louisiana. The ground floor is dedicated to Mardi Gras, and the upper floor tells the story of Hurricane Katrina with a directness and emotional power that no news footage can match.
The Mardi Gras exhibition is a revelation even for people who think they understand Carnival. The display includes elaborate costumes from the Rex, Zulu, and Mardi Gras Indian tribes, interactive exhibits explaining the social structure of krewes (the organisations that stage the parades), and video of the spectacle itself that conveys the scale and intensity better than any photograph. The Mardi Gras Indian suits — beaded, feathered, handmade costumes that take a full year to create and cost thousands of hours of labour — are works of art that rival anything in a fine art museum.
The Katrina exhibition upstairs is devastating and essential. It includes personal artifacts — a child's toy recovered from a flooded house, a handwritten sign saying 'We Are Not Leaving' — alongside video testimony, photographs, and a timeline of the disaster that makes clear how the failure was institutional, not natural. The storm hit on August 29, 2005, and the exhibition doesn't let you forget that the levee failures that flooded 80% of the city were the result of engineering decisions made decades earlier. The Presbytère makes you understand both celebrations and catastrophes, which are the two poles of New Orleans life.
Verified Facts
The Presbytère was completed in 1813
The building is the architectural twin of the Cabildo, flanking St. Louis Cathedral
Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans on August 29, 2005
Approximately 80% of the city was flooded due to levee failures during Katrina
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751 Chartres St, New Orleans, LA 70116
