Lafayette Cemetery New Orleans

New Orleans is home to many notable cemeteries, but Lafayette No.1 was the only one we had time to visit. Placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1972, Lafayette is the oldest of the seven municipal, city-operated cemeteries in New Orleans and is non-segregated and non-denominational. The above ground tombs in Lafayette are typical of all the cemeteries in New Orleans due to the high water table. If you dig down too deep to bury the deceased underground, the burial plot would soon fill with water and caskets would float away. 

There are immigrants from over 25 different countries and natives of 26 states interred here. But perhaps the most famous residents of Lafayette Cemetery are fictional. The tomb for the Mayfair witches, created by Anne Rice, in The Witching Hour, fits a combination of the Lafayette and Jefferson fireman tombs. Rice also staged a jazz funeral where she rode in a glass enclosed coffin down the aisle of Lafayette Cemetery No. 1 to introduce her book Memnoch the Devil. The vampire Lestat’s tomb, made from Styrofoam for the movie, Interview with a Vampire, was possibly modeled from the cast iron tomb. Many other movies have been filmed in the cemetery, including Double Jeopardy in 1999 and Dracula 2000 in 2000.