City Park and Couturie Forest

City Park grew on land that was once a plantation and later a dueling ground beneath the great oaks, and it developed into a public park over the late 1800s and early 1900s, expanded during the Great Depression by federal work programs. Its defining feature is its live oaks, many of them centuries old and among the oldest of their kind anywhere.

These sprawling, moss-draped trees give the park its unmistakable character, their heavy limbs reaching low to the ground and their canopies shading the lagoons and lawns. Some are estimated to be many hundreds of years old, living links to the land as it was long before the modern city grew around it.

The park is home to the New Orleans Museum of Art, the city's oldest fine-arts museum, and its adjoining sculpture garden, where works of art are set among the oaks and reflecting pools. Nearby are a botanical garden and the Carousel Gardens amusement area, with its beautifully restored antique carousel, one of the last of its kind still operating.

These attractions make City Park a cultural as well as a natural destination. Families come for the carousel and the storybook grounds, art lovers for the museum and sculpture, and everyone for the shaded lawns and lagoons that make the park a favorite gathering place for New Orleanians.

In a quieter corner of the park lies Couturie Forest, a woodland preserve of some sixty acres that has been allowed to grow wild. Its trails wind through several habitats, from bottomland forest to more open ground, and it draws birdwatchers and walkers looking for a taste of nature within the city.

The forest holds a small geographic curiosity. New Orleans is famously flat and largely below sea level, but within Couturie Forest rises Laborde Mountain, a modest man-made hill that stands as the highest natural-feeling point in the city, a gentle summit of perhaps forty-some feet with a view over the treetops.

City Park anchors the Mid-City area of New Orleans and connects to the surrounding neighborhoods by streetcar and the ridge along historic Bayou St. John. It is deeply woven into the life of the city, a place for morning runs, family picnics, festivals, and quiet paddles on the lagoons.

For visitors, the park offers a green counterpoint to the French Quarter and a chance to see how New Orleanians relax and gather. Between its oaks, art, gardens, and hidden forest, it rewards a slow, unhurried visit and reveals a gentler, greener side of the city.

The closest Boutel™ stays, so you can turn this stop into an overnight. Each is an independently owned, editorially selected place to stay.