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Vigil
Wrought iron arch over a cemetery gate reading "Lafayette Cemetery No. 1", with whitewashed above-ground tombs and a stone cross behind itPhoto: President Rhapsody, CC BY-SA 3.0
Narrow paved aisle running between two rows of white above-ground tombs, with grass growing through the paving and trees overheadPhoto: MusikAnimal, CC BY-SA 4.0
Row of weathered above-ground tombs topped by stone crosses along a sunlit path, with trees in the distancePhoto: snickclunk, CC BY 2.0
Red brick barrel-topped tombs with ferns growing from the mortar joints, flowers at their bases, under a magnolia treePhoto: snickclunk, CC BY 2.0
White plastered tomb marked "A. Leitz, Sr." with its vault open, showing stacked bricks and a scratched closure tablet insidePhoto: snickclunk, CC BY 2.0

Lafayette Cemetery No. 1

Cemetery, Historic siteGarden District, New Orleans
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Entry is limited to guests booked on a Preservation Resource Center tour and to families vetted by the city's cemetery division. Tombs and copings are private property: do not enter without permission.

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Lafayette Cemetery No. 1 is a one-block walled cemetery in the Garden District of New Orleans, dedicated in 1833 and named a National Historic Landmark in 1972 1. The city closed it to the public in 2019 after what Save Our Cemeteries described as over-tourism, vandalism and a cemetery overrun with ghost tours, and reopened it on October 1, 2026 with tours run only by the Preservation Resource Center 2. The tomb owners association has also reported tombs damaged by people it calls "the ghoulishly motivated" 3. Visitors commonly describe a sense of being watched among the tombs, figures glimpsed between the mausoleum rows, and voices along the magnolia-lined aisles with no one nearby.

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