The New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival is America's most culturally rich outdoor music event, celebrating Louisiana's extraordinary musical traditions since 1970 at the Fair Grounds Race Course with attendances often topping 400,000. Spanning two weekends each spring, Jazz Fest presents jazz, blues, gospel, zydeco, Cajun, and roots music alongside an unmatched New Orleans food village. Hotels throughout the city are essential to book early, as Jazz Fest coincides with one of the most popular travel periods to New Orleans.
Our Picks — New Orleans
French Quarter
A 1300-room Beaux-Arts tower that has anchored the Quarter since 1886, famous for its rotating Carousel Bar — a 25-seat merry-go-round cocktail lounge that turns slowly enough to maintain the illusion of sobriety. The hotel has hosted Hemingway, Faulkner, and Tennessee Williams, all of whom have rooms named after them.
French Quarter
Occupying a pair of landmark Beaux-Arts buildings on Canal Street, the Ritz offers the French Quarter's most polished luxury experience — the M Bistro breakfast is excellent, the spa is the best in the city, and the hotel's jazz concierge can get you into the right clubs before they fill up.
French Quarter
A 33-room hidden masterpiece tucked into two adjoining 1830s Creole townhouses, with antique-filled rooms around a magnolia courtyard and a service philosophy modelled on a private house party. There's no restaurant (intentionally), no pool, and no pool bar — and yet guests return year after year because the romance and quiet are irreplaceable.
Garden District
A beloved 1927 Garden District landmark recently restored to its full Jazz Age splendour, with hand-painted murals, the exceptional Caribbean Room restaurant, and a rooftop with views across the city's oak-canopied residential landscape. The Magazine Street streetcar stops outside the door.
French Quarter
The team behind the legendary Brennan's Restaurant has created an intimate 15-room hotel where New Orleans excess is celebrated with theatrical conviction — a 24-hour kitchen, a stunning courtyard pool flanked by cocktail-dispensing antique carts, and suites themed around the city's great culinary personalities.
French Quarter
Seven private cottages (and one 7,000 sq ft villa) in a walled garden where John James Audubon once painted — the most exclusive accommodation in the French Quarter, with private pools, a dedicated butler for each cottage, and absolute privacy amid the neighbourhood's perpetual carnival.
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