A Walk in the Park: City Park New Orleans

New Orleans's City Park is one of the largest urban parks in the United States, with roots stretching back to a Native American canoe portage that helped determine where the city itself was founded. On this walking tour, you'll hear the park's story through its ancient oaks, Creole dueling traditions, and the Works Progress Administration artists who shaped its golden era.

The tour starts at the Monteleone Pillars on Lelong Avenue, where 25-foot columns mark the park's main entrance. You'll walk toward the New Orleans Museum of Art, whose Greek temple facade houses works by Picasso, Monet, and Degas, passing oaks named for notorious Creole duelists along the way. From there, you'll cross into the park's interior, stopping at the Popp Bandstand – a bronze-domed replica of the Temple of Love at Versailles – before reaching Morning Call at the Casino building, where beignets and café au lait have been a New Orleans tradition for generations.

The tour continues past the McDonogh Oak, a 700-to-800-year-old giant requiring cement crutches for support, and alongside Bayou Metairie, where alligators, soft-shelled turtles, and black bass share the water. You'll explore the Peristyle, a neoclassical pavilion built in 1907 for moonlit dances, and cross the Great Lawn before returning to the Monteleone Pillars. The tour ends where it began, with the full sweep of City Park behind you.

On this 75-minute tour, you'll have a chance to:

• Hear stories of Creole dueling culture at the Dueling Oaks, where ten disputes were settled in a single Sunday in 1839
• Visit Roy Lichtenstein's Five Brushstrokes, a 20-foot pop art sculpture installed outside NOMA in 2013
• Discover the Lost Goddess of City Park, a WPA-era fountain that spent years hidden in a lagoon before its restoration
• Learn about Enrique Alférez, a Mexican revolutionary soldier turned New Orleans sculptor who defined the park's Art Deco aesthetic
• Walk the Big Lake Boardwalk, where a marsh exhibit houses Lynda Benglis's two-ton bronze fountain from the 1984 World's Fair
• Spot egrets, anhingas, and over 280 bird species recorded in the park

City Park rewards slow walking and curious eyes – this tour gives you the stories to make sense of everything you see.