New Orleans - French Quarter (Vieux Carre)

Vieux Carre

(French Quarter)

The Vieux Carre or French Quarter of New Orleans, the old town center, extends along a crescent shaped bend on the Mississippi. French influence is particularly marked in the buildings, some of them between 100 and 270 years old, with their arcades, wrought iron balconies, red-tiled roofs and picturesque fountain decked courtyards. The blacks who settled in the town, together with the old established Creole inhabitants, created jazz around the turn of the 19th c. in the entertainment quarter, which was demarcated by municipal ordinance in 1897 and marked out with red lamps, and in nearby Bourbon Street. Nowadays the district contains a profusion of jazz spots and places of entertainment of very