Pirates Alley stretches just one block between the imposing Cabildo (town council) and St. Louis Cathedral, yet it packs more literary legend than historical pirate facts. The cobblestoned passage gets its romantic name from tales of Jean Lafitte's smuggling operations, though historians doubt the wily privateer would conduct business under the noses of both church and government officials.

What's undeniably true is the alley's transformation into New Orleans' most celebrated literary address. William Faulkner rented the ground floor of 624 Pirates Alley in 1925, where he penned his first novel, Soldiers' Pay, and his collection New Orleans Sketches. The future Nobel laureate arrived as an unsung poet and left as a novelist, his genius nurtured in this narrow passage where chamber pots once emptied into the central drain.

VoiceMap's self-guided tours trace Faulkner's footsteps through this storied alley, connecting his literary awakening to the broader cultural renaissance of 1920s New Orleans while revealing the surprising practicalities of French Quarter life.