The Garden District is an essay in shade and symmetry. St. Charles Avenue lifts the live oaks like cathedral beams, streetcars rattling past Greek Revival mansions and gothic fantasies that look borrowed from novels.
On Magazine Street, boutiques, antique shops, coffee counters, and cocktail bars line up in a relaxed parade; you can pair a vintage jacket with a glass of rye in one block. Lafayette Cemetery No. 1 is closed for preservation, but you can glimpse the tombs through the fence and feel the city's ongoing conversation with its dead.
The neighborhood asks for gentleness: stay on sidewalks, don't touch the vines, keep voices low at night. It is residential first, glamorous second, and at sunset the porches glow like stages.