I finally visited the Old Ursuline Convent museum on Chartres Street. The Ursuline Convent is the oldest building in not just New Orleans, but the entire Mississippi River Valley, and the only remaining example of French colonial architecture that was completed during the French regime.¹ It’s a brick between posts style construction covered in stucco on the outside and plaster on the inside. The first floor features the original exposed cypress beams.

The museum requires a guided tour with your visit, and the tour is not available every day. The tour explored a three rooms on the first floor and the church. It lasted about 40 minutes. They allow photos.

After the tour, you can wander around and into the courtyard for the rest of the hour, but the building was shut exactly at the hour. There are five rooms with displays — history of the Ursulines in New Orleans, important sites of Catholicism in New Orleans, the mourning practices of Creoles, cemetery traditions, and relics.

The rooms explain the history of the Ursuline nuns sent to New Orleans to educate young women and run the hospital. There are also artifacts from this history. I was impressed with the depth of history the guide shared and pleased that it aligns with the history I share on tours. I was most impressed by the artifacts recovered from the St. Peter St. Cemetery on display.

The tour even discussed Piccolo Palermo and the influence of Italian immigration on the French Quarter and explained why we bury above ground. There was unfortunately no mention of the Casket Girls on the tour, and I didn’t think to ask…

Overall, this was an affordable and thorough introduction to the history of New Orleans through the lens of the Ursuline nuns. If you’re visiting on a weekend and want a quick overview of how things went down, this is an excellent guided option.

Want to know how the Ursuline nuns factor into the history of New Orleans Voodoo? Watch my video to learn more.

1. The two other examples of French colonial architecture, Lafitte’s Blacksmith Shop and Madame John’s Legacy, were built in the 1770s and 1788 respectively, during the Spanish regime. ↩︎