St. Louis Cemetery No. 1

St. Louis Cemetery No. 1 is the oldest cemetery in New Orleans — established in 1789, packed with above-ground tombs that earned these burial grounds the nickname 'Cities of the Dead,' and home to the alleged tomb of Marie Laveau, the voodoo queen whose name is inseparable from the city's supernatural reputation. Access is restricted to guided tours only (since 2015, to prevent vandalism), and the tours are some of the best in the city.

The above-ground tombs exist because of engineering, not aesthetics. New Orleans sits below sea level on a swamp, and early settlers discovered that buried coffins had a tendency to float back to the surface during floods — a problem that above-ground interment neatly solved. The result is a dense grid of whitewashed tombs, some elaborate and well-maintained, others crumbling and overgrown, that together create a landscape unlike any other cemetery in America.

Marie Laveau's tomb — a Greek Revival family vault with a flat slab roof — draws more visitors than any other. The practice of marking three X's on the tomb and leaving offerings (coins, beads, cigars, rum) in exchange for a wish granted was so widespread that the tomb was being physically damaged, which prompted the access restrictions. Laveau herself was a real historical figure — a free woman of colour who practiced Voodoo in 19th-century New Orleans and wielded extraordinary influence in a city where the boundaries between African, Catholic, and folk spiritual traditions were never as firm as the authorities pretended.