Cathedral of St. Louis, King of France

Benjamin Henry Latrobe designed the central tower added in 1819, with a clock and a bell named Victoire for the Battle of New Orleans. During the 1849 enlargement the tower collapsed in 1850, and the architect de Pouilly and the builder John Patrick Kirwan were replaced; the old bell was reused. A dynamite bomb went off inside on April 25, 1909, and a partial foundation collapse closed the cathedral from Easter 1916 to Easter 1917. Pope John Paul II visited in September 1987. Katrina damaged the roof and organ in 2005, and the rebuilt organ returned in June 2008.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• The Cabildo — steps away
  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 — steps away
  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.
• New Orleans Jazz National Historical Park — 0.2 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.
• Congo Square — 0.4 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.

More markers nearby

• Bourbon Street Attack Memorial Crosses — steps away
• Jackson Square — steps away
• The Presbytère — steps away
• Don Bernardo de Galvez — steps away