Old Ursuline Convent

The building is the nuns' second convent. Ignace Francois Broutin drew plans for the first in 1727, and it was finished in 1734. Broutin prepared plans for this one in 1745, Claude Joseph Villars Dubreuil was the contractor, and some materials from the first building were reused. It is stucco-covered brick in a formal French neoclassical style. In 1824 the school moved to Dauphine Street and the building passed to Bishop DuBourg, later known as the Archbishop's Palace. The Park Service calls it the finest surviving example of French colonial public architecture in the country.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• The Cabildo — 0.3 mi
  The Spanish town hall on Jackson Square, finished in 1799, where Louisiana changed flags in 1803 and where the state Supreme Court sat in the same room until 1910, Plessy v. Ferguson among its cases.
• The Historic New Orleans Collection — 0.4 mi
  A French Quarter museum and research center founded in 1966, whose 2015 Purchased Lives exhibition took on New Orleans' place as the largest slave market in antebellum America.
• Congo Square — 0.5 mi
  The 2.35-acre corner of Louis Armstrong Park where, from 1817, New Orleans confined Sunday dancing by enslaved people to one place, and where crowds of hundreds gathered to drum, dance and trade.
• New Orleans Jazz National Historical Park — 0.5 mi
  A National Park Service unit created in 1994 to tell where jazz came from, with free programs and a visitor center in the French Quarter and park land inside Louis Armstrong Park.

More markers nearby

• Birthplace of Danny Barker — steps away
• Gallier House — steps away
• French Market — steps away
• First Protestant Church in New Orleans — steps away