New Orleans' Magazine Street from the museum to the zoo

Shops at the Lower Garden District end

District Donuts Sliders Brew (2209 Magazine Street) opens at 7 a.m. and serves until 9 p.m., every day. Seven donuts rotate each week out of a catalogue of more than 100, sitting outsized in a lit glass case along the pale wood counter. The coffee is their own Cool Kids roast, poured into branded cups. Counter service and those hours make this the practical start to the Lower Garden District stretch, and large orders are taken in advance.

Trashy Diva (2048 Magazine Street) opens at 12 p.m. and closes at 6 p.m., daily. The label began in 1996 as a French Quarter vintage shop and now designs its own monthly collections in New Orleans, cut in sizes 0 to 26. The shopfront is compact: racks of 1940s and 50s repro print dresses in limited-edition fabrics, pin-up styling and a mirrored fitting corner.

Simon of New Orleans at Antiques on Jackson (Jackson Avenue at Magazine Street) leans its hand-painted plywood signs three-deep across the shopfront, hot primary colours under stars and dots, slogans mixing French, English and Creole. You will have seen them already in bars across the city. Signs average $400, scaled by size and word count. The workshop sits behind the showroom and Simon is still painting at 73, so call ahead if you want to meet him.

The Irish Channel church and the Garden District cemetery

Start at the National Shrine of Blessed Francis Xavier Seelos at St. Mary's Assumption Church (Josephine Street) at 10 a.m., when it opens. The doors stay open until 2 p.m., Monday to Saturday, and the church is closed on Sunday. Entry is free, and you check in at the Welcome Center on Josephine Street for the film and the museum.

The church is tall red brick in German Baroque, with a slender bell tower, a hand-carved Bavarian wooden high altar and stained glass inside, and Seelos's remains in a bronze reliquary in a side chapel. Directly across Constance Street is St. Alphonsus, a National Historic Landmark. Two blocks off Magazine, these two churches are what the German and Irish immigrants who built the corridor left behind.

Lafayette Cemetery No. 1 (Washington Avenue gate) is the Garden District stop worth planning around. Inside a low brick perimeter wall and behind a wrought-iron gate, rows of whitewashed above-ground brick and plaster tombs stand under enormous live oaks and magnolias, many of the tombs cracked open. The Preservation Resource Center is the sole tour operator and caps each tour at 16 people, which rules out walking in with a big party or wandering on your own. Tours run 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. daily and book out, so reserve before you travel. The fee is waived for family members of those interred. Theatrical ghost tours are banned.

Antiques in the Napoleon to Louisiana stretch

Magazine Antique Mall anchors the antiques cluster between Napoleon and Louisiana, and it is the oldest and largest mall of its kind in South Louisiana. The 40 dealer booths fill 7,000 square feet, packed tight under hanging crystal chandeliers, with stacked gilt mirrors, glass cases of estate jewellery and tangles of old Mardi Gras beads. Prices run from small collectibles up to serious furniture. The aisles are narrow, and the doors shut at 5 p.m. or 5.30 p.m. Come before the drinking starts.

Dinner and oysters on Magazine Street

Shaya, on Magazine Street, works a bright white-tiled open kitchen around a domed wood-fired oven, and the pita balloons as it bakes. The bread straight out of that oven is what most people remember. Hummus arrives under a slick of olive oil, and you sit on pale green leather banquettes to eat it. The cooking is Israeli, run through a Southern filter. Reserve, because walk-ins rarely get in. Weekday happy hour runs 4 p.m. to 6 p.m.

La Petite Grocery (4238 Magazine Street) occupies a 19th-century corner grocery building, cream stucco with dark green awnings and arched windows, white tablecloths and a pressed-tin ceiling inside. It is the flagship of Justin Devillier, a James Beard winner, and the most reliable grown-up dinner on the street. Order the blue-crab beignets. Book a table, and ask about private dining if you are bringing a party.

Casamento's Restaurant, further up Magazine Street, has been family-run since 1919, and the room alone justifies the stop. Gleaming green and white glazed ceramic tiles run floor to ceiling across every wall and surface, and a shucker works behind the marble oyster bar. Order the fried oyster loaf on thick buttered pan bread. The room is cramped and takes no reservations, so four to six people work here and a larger party does not. Expect to queue. It closes completely from early June through early September for oyster season.

Drinking after the shops close

The Bulldog, on Magazine Street, has poured since 1994. Hours are 11 a.m. to 1 a.m., daily. More than 50 nitrogen-pumped chrome tap handles line the back bar, with enough European imports to please anyone who has had their fill of sweet cocktails. Pub food comes out to the courtyard patio, where the fountain is built entirely from old beer taps spouting water. The door is strictly over-21.

Ms. Mae's (4336 Magazine Street) is cheap and open 24 hours, which is what holds this end of the street together once the shops and kitchens shut. The blunt corner building has windows crowded with old neon beer signs. Inside are a scarred bar and a jukebox, with a back patio and the TV on for the game. It takes cash only, so bring notes. It is a dive on purpose.

The upriver end at Audubon

Audubon Park and The Fly (Audubon Riverview Park) is free and unrestricted, and the best thing on the corridor that costs nothing. The park holds 150 live oaks, some more than 250 years old, dripping Spanish moss over a still lagoon and a paved loop path. Behind the zoo, the grass levee at The Fly opens flat onto the wide brown Mississippi, with cargo ships passing close in. The Fly is where the city goes for crawfish boils and pick-up sport, and amplified sound or a formal event needs a permit. The riverside section reopened recently with new restrooms and a playground.

Audubon Zoo (6500 Magazine Street) is the literal end of the street. Adult admission is $28. Go in for the Louisiana Swamp exhibit, a boardwalk on stilts over black cypress water with rare white alligators below. The 1920s Odenheimer building stands on the same grounds, Spanish revival with arched stucco loggias. The Reptile Encounter and Wings of the World are shut for construction until early 2027.

Where to stay on Magazine Street

Hotel Saint Vincent (1507 Magazine Street) is the one serious design hotel on the street itself. The red-brick former orphanage dates to 1861 and was restored in 2021. Its 75 rooms sit behind deep arched galleries and iron balconies set around a tiled courtyard pool, with maximalist patterned interiors throughout. The San Lorenzo dining room and the sun-filled Paradise Lounge patio serve non-residents as well as guests, and both take event bookings. From the door you are walking distance from the WWII Museum one way and the Garden District shops the other.

Before you go

Reserve the Lafayette Cemetery No. 1 tour before you travel and book Shaya ahead; the Seelos shrine is closed on Sunday and Casamento's closes from early June through early September. See the New Orleans guide and the New Orleans hotel search.