Academy of the Sacred Heart

The school began with a gift. Mrs. Charles Smith, widow of an Opelousas planter, gave land, a building and travel funds for two nuns, and in 1821 the Religious of the Sacred Heart founded a convent and school here. In the fall of 1863 Union troops camped near the Academy while fighting raged around Grand Coteau, and the school was not damaged. The Academy of the Sacred Heart joined the National Register of Historic Places in 1975, five years before the town's historic district.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Le Vieux Village and the Venus House — 7.4 mi
  A heritage park in Opelousas built around the Venus House of about 1791, the home of a free Creole woman of color, Marie Francois Venus, with an old schoolhouse, Methodist church and the visitor center's zydeco music exhibit.
• Vermilionville — 15 mi
  A living-history village of about 23 acres on Bayou Vermilion in Lafayette, opened in 1990 to interpret the Native peoples, Acadians, Creoles and people of African descent of the Attakapas region.
• Cypress Island Preserve at Lake Martin — 18 mi
  Nearly 10,000 acres of bottomland hardwood and cypress-tupelo swamp at the south end of Lake Martin, owned by The Nature Conservancy, with a boardwalk and a rookery of egrets, spoonbills and alligators.
• Atchafalaya Welcome Center — 20 mi
  A state welcome center inside the Atchafalaya Basin, the nation's largest river swamp, with exhibits on Basin history and life, a film, a crawfishing boat and French-speaking staff.

More markers nearby

• Grand Coteau — 1.2 mi
• Site of Bowie Residence — 6.5 mi
• Welcome to Arnaudville — 6.9 mi
• Assumption School — 7.2 mi