New Orleans Graveyards

I love to check them out. It tells so much about the individuals and the time in which they lived. I loved my trip to New Orleans and soaked up the flavor. I stayed in the French Quarter and went on no less than 4 walking tours. That was what kept me from eating myself into another dress size! LOL!

Wow... I think I was the only one to like to do that :) I love to get around and try to find the oldest cript in the cementery... also if I can talk with the keepers on the cementery it's better, because u can get a lot of info from them!! If u can ever visit the 'Cristobal Colon' cementary in La Habana u can find over there a lot of history... a lot to great funerary art mostly europeans ... they r gorgeous!

New Orleans is one of my favorite cities. I'm usually there for two weeks for the Jazz Festival. I'm close to a couple who live near the French Quarter, and they love when I come in because it's the only time they get to do the tourist thing.

Just the artistry that goes into some of those vaults is amazing. Not just a hole in the ground, well, actually there are no holes in the ground or you'd strike water. And the dates on the crypt are pretty awesome too.

I did a driving tour of South Louisiana on my way from New Orleans to Austin once. I stopped in a little town in Cajun country called GranCoteaux, or something like that, and it had a mini version of a New Orleans cemetery, but some of the graves were older. Some went back to the late 1600s. I was amazed.

There are a bunch of real old churches down there, too, if you're interested.

I always hit cemetaries in new places I'm visiting. It helps to get to know the place. There are some great ones in Boston and, or course, Trinity Church in NYC. One of the best is Westwood Village Memorial Park in LA.

The graveyards in New Orleans look quite creepy though, which is why I suppose they feature quite a lot in the vampire chronicles by anne rice lol. But I agree that the grave sites that have been there for centuries are a treasure trove of history and interesting stories if you take the time to read the headstones and maybe do a little online research into some of the people who are buried there. Who knows what you may unearth ?

Hmmm... New Orleans girl? What part are you from, child? Westbank, Northshore? Or do you just know the area?

We spent a summer in Nederland, Colorado, when I was 11 or 12. At the time I enjoyed hiking by myself and one day I stumbled onto an old cemetary above the town. There had been a large tungsten mine there, owned by English interests and manned by their people. Nearly all of the graves were inside wrought iron fencing and the tops were planted with large round stones. I learned later that this was to keep wolves and other wildlife from digging into the graves.'

Several of the headstones (many were ornate) had poems engraved on them and one of them ruined my day.
It read: Stranger pause as you pass by.
As you are now, so once was I.
As I am now so you shall be.
Prepare for death and follow me.
Just as I finished reading that for the first time, a wolf or coyote howled from across the canyon and I RAN all the way home.

Gramps

I have visited some of those graveyards. I did not however make it to Marie Leveau's grave site. I believe that is her name. The one where you live x's and o's on the grave.

Some were so very old yet contained a certain beauty. The statues on some of them are majestic and very beautiful. To give such thought and expression to something as final as death is an incredible example of artistic interpretation of eternity.