Quebecois French colonizer Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne de Bienville wrote a letter to the Mississippi Company, saying that he had discovered a bend in the Mississippi River shaped like a crescent. In his professional opinion as an invasive New World colonizer, this crescent area would be safe from tidal surges and hurricanes. It would make a great place for the capital of the new colony of Louisiana. The Mississippi Company told Sieur de Bienville to go for it. The city was named for Regent of the Kingdom of France, Philippe II, duke of the French city of Orléans.

In 1763, France ceded the colony to Spain. Goodbye La Nouvelle-Orléans, hello Nueva Orleans. During the American Revolution, the city was an important rebel port. Lots of smuggling of military equipment and supplies happened on the Mississippi. The Spanish maintained control of New Orleans for 40 years, with their influence visible in the Vieux Carré—French for “old city,” this is the area popularly known as the French Quarter. Virtually all of the French Quarter architecture is Spanish. The French took back the area in 1803, and Napoleon sold “New France” to the U.S. with the Louisiana Purchase. The city took off as Americans, French, Creoles and Africans flooded in, followed by Irish, Germans and Italians. Sugar and cotton plantations outside the city became a huge part of the economy.

In 1804, the end of the Haitian Revolution saw an influx of thousands of refugees, both whites and “gens de couleur libres,” free people of color (also known as “affranchise,” a word denoting liberation from servitude). The governor and his cronies wanted to restrict the influx of additional free black men, but the French Creoles wanted more French speakers. So, more refugees came, including Haitians who’d first gone to Cuba. The city’s population doubled. The immigrant influx was comprised in almost equal thirds of whites, free people of color and slaves. 

During the War of 1812, the British tried to capture New Orleans with a massive force of 11,000 troops. In another great American tradition, General Andrew Jackson patched together a motley crew of fighters: Louisiana and Mississippi militiamen, both whites and free men of color; U.S. Army troops; Tennessee state militia; Kentucky riflemen; Choctaw warriors; and, of course, privateers led by the infamous pirate Jean Lafitte. Backed by the U.S. Navy out on the Mississippi, Jackson’s ragtag band of men trounced the Brits. The Battle of New Orleans is also poetically fitting and in step with the city’s consistent march to its own drum. The battle began on January 8, 1815. The armies had no idea that the war was over. It had ended on Christmas Eve, a week and a half earlier. 

Trade in New Orleans became huge. Commodities exports from the nation’s interior, imports from other countries, warehousing and transfer depots, merchant traffic up and down the Mississippi—it was a vibrant and bustling commercial port. Despite being a major center in the slave trade, New Orleans also had the nation’s most significant and prosperous community of free persons of color, many of them educated property owners. 

The French-speaking population remained in the majority until after the Louisiana Purchase. Then, the Anglo-American migration began and the city’s population doubled. By 1840, New Orleans was the richest city in the U.S., with the third biggest population. That’s when the influx of German and Irish immigrants began. In the 1850s, half of the city’s schools were still French speaking. The boom times continued until the Civil War changed everything—much to the chagrin of the city’s French Creole elite. 

Northern forces under Gen. Benjamin F. “Beast” Butler occupied New Orleans. Butler abolished French in the schools. Between English-only laws, the use of English as the language of commerce and government, and the influx of Irish, German and Italian speakers, French diminished considerably by the early 1900s. Still, about a quarter of the city’s population spoke French daily. About half the population could understand French. But after almost 100 years of publication, the city’s last, big French-language newspaper went belly up in 1923.

Despite falling to Union troops early in the war, New Orleans missed the devastation suffered by so many Southern cities. The Union Army eventually controlled the Mississippi River up Louisiana’s coast. Ex-slaves from rural areas and some free people of color from the city were among the first volunteers in black regiments known as the Corps d'Afrique. In the last years of the war, they were complemented by the United States Colored Troops and became significant players. 

Mounting violence after the Civil War prompted Congress to pass the Reconstruction Act and the Fourteenth Amendment. The full protection of citizenship was extended to freedmen and free people of color. Louisiana was readmitted to the Union in 1868, and its constitution granted voting rights to men and public education to all. Elections resulted in both blacks and whites holding local and state office. In 1872, Republican P.B.S. Pinchback became the first African-American state governor. The New Orleans school system was racially integrated. 

Much of this progress fell apart when Reconstruction foundered, recession hit, and white insurgent paramilitary violence was supported by the Democratic Party. African Americans were disenfranchised and lost many of their rights. New Orleans’ gens de couleur libres fought back, though it wasn’t until the advances brought about by the Civil Rights Movement and the activism of the 1960s that constitutional rights were effectively restored. 

Meanwhile, New Orleans’ supremacy as a center for trade was waning with development of the transportation infrastructure around the rest of the nation. The city’s status as a southern banking center also began to diminish. Manufacturing shrank. But the Civil Rights struggle took hold and was vital here. Tourism became a mainstay industry. And there was the flood control industry, so to speak. Pumping and drainage became key in developing low-lying areas near the city. 

Eventually, it became apparent that efforts to dry out and develop these areas was also causing erosion and making some parts more vulnerable to hurricanes. The ultimate manifestation of all this: the catastrophic failure of the Federal levee system during Hurricane Katrina in late August, 2005. It’s considered the worst civil engineering disaster in U.S. history. Floodwalls and levees built by the United States Army Corps of Engineers failed below spec. Over three quarters of New Orleans flooded. Tens of thousands were stranded here. People were rescued or looked for shelter at the Superdome and the Convention Center. 

As clean up began, the city was pronounced off-limits. In September, Hurricane Rita followed on Katrina’s tail. It thwarted efforts to bring residents back to the city and flooded the Lower Ninth Ward all over again. The damage in New Orleans was so extraordinary, many residents who evacuated simply never went back. (One city that received a lot of New Orleanians was Houston.) A popular civic effort from the 1990s was the long-running, “New Orleans: proud to call it home” campaign. Not missing a beat in the New Orleanian ability to find humor in the dark times, it wasn’t long before there came a profusion of bumper stickers proclaiming, “New Orleans: proud to swim home.” 

About a year later, the estimated population of the city was about half of pre-hurricane levels. It took until 2010 for the population levels to return to pre-hurricane numbers. Though, in typical New Orleans fashion, the city never missed throwing Mardi Gras or the Jazz & Heritage Festival, two of the major, mainstay New Orleans events. The Superdome was repaired and renovated, and the Saints returned for their 2006-2007 season. (Riding the ongoing wave of Katrina adversity and recovery, the Saints won 13 games of their 2009 season and qualified for the Super Bowl. They went on to trump the Colts 31-17 in Miami.)

No discussion of New Orleans is complete without mentioning the world-famous cuisine. When you look at the multi-cultural history of the city, it’s probably no surprise that the food here is a mashup: it’s filled with French, Spanish, Italian, African, Native American, Cajun, Chinese and even Cuban flavors. The cooking here is typically Creole, haute Creole or New Orleans French. (Or American, which can be delivered in some really interesting ways). Unsurprisingly, there’s a lot of seafood. Some famous New Orleans culinary inventions are the po' boy and muffuletta sandwiches, oysters Rockefeller and bananas Foster. 

Creole cuisine is unique to the area. It’s influenced by flavors from France, Spain, West Africa and Native America, as well as Germany and Italy. It can be rich, saucy and complex. The “holy trinity” is often in evidence: onions, bell peppers and celery. Tomatoes figure prominently and okra is common. Cajun cuisine is evolved from the Acadians, French-Canadian colonists kicked out of Canada by the British. Cajun cooking is partly French and also capitalizes on the holy trinity, but is usually heartier and more rustic than Creole. It’s also easier to cook. Shellfish, pork and game are common. It can be fiery hot or not, but almost always has many flavors and spices, with garlic and hot peppers being mainstays. Soul food, comprised of simple and affordable ingredients, traces its roots back to West Africa and is also popular here. 

Along with the food, music is a way of life. This is the birthplace of jazz. New Orleans was possibly the only place where African slaves were allowed to have drums. On Sundays, they would get together in Congo Square, in what is now Louis Armstrong Park in the Tremé. Hundreds of Africans would congregate, play music and dance. Eventually, American folk and European influences permeated the music. Much of the musical heritage identified with New Orleans grew from here. Congo Square has literally influenced work by a range of artists, from 19th-century composer Louis Moreau Gottschalk to Wynton Marsalis, R&B Singer Teena Marie to hard rockers Great White. Speaking virtually, Congo Square has influenced any American musician you’ve ever known.