Sin & Salvation Tour

For nearly three centuries, New Orleans has lived somewhere between the sacred and the scandalous. Sin & Salvation: Saints, Sinners, and the Struggle for the Soul of New Orleans explores the complicated relationship between faith, vice, morality, power, forgiveness, and reinvention in a city that has never fit neatly into anyone’s definition of respectable.

The journey begins at Jackson Square, where guests look across at St. Louis Cathedral while hearing about the notorious Gallatin Street vice district and the infamous Bricktop. From there, the tour moves into the religious heart of the city through the stories of Père Antoine, the Ursulines, Marie Laveau’s Catholicism and Voodoo, Henriette Delille, and the Sisters of the Holy Family. Along the way, we examine the idea of the “fallen woman,” Catholic efforts to serve those society rejected, and the question of who has historically been allowed to define sin in the first place.

As the walk continues, Mardi Gras and Lent reveal a city where indulgence and repentance have long shared the same calendar. Stories of temperance, moral reform, prostitution, and vice regulation lead into Storyville and two of its most fascinating women, Josie Arlington and Lulu White. Their lives raise difficult questions about race, sexuality, exploitation, female power, wealth, and respectability. The tour also explores jazz and the New Orleans funeral tradition, where grief, celebration, death, and renewal exist side by side.

On Conti Street, guests encounter the world of Norma Wallace, remembered as New Orleans’ last great madam, before continuing to the final stop inside historic May Baily’s Place. Seated inside a former bordello, the group explores prostitution before, during, and after Storyville, finishes Norma Wallace’s remarkable story, and returns to the question posed at the beginning of the tour.

We begin looking at a cathedral while talking about sin. We end sitting in a bordello while talking about salvation.

By the end, the question is no longer simply who was a saint and who was a sinner, but whether New Orleans ever truly believed the two were as different as we like to pretend.