Explore the real places in New Orleans that appear in Interview with the Vampire by Anne Rice. Each location on the map shows what happens there in the novel, the real history of the place, and what's there today. Featured locations include Louis's Plantation House (Pointe du Lac), The Vampire House (Rue Royale), St. Louis Cemetery No. 1, The French Quarter Streets, The Theater District and 9 more.
River Road, outside New Orleans — Louis's ancestral home
Louis de Pointe du Lac's ancestral plantation where he begins his mortal life as a troubled plantation owner. After his brother's mysterious death, Louis falls into despair and contemplative darkness. It is here that Lestat arrives on a fateful night, seducing Louis with promises of eternal existence and transformation. The plantation represents Louis's last connection to his human identity and the starting point of his curse as a vampire.
River Road, also called Plantation Alley, was lined with grand plantation estates in the 18th and 19th centuries built on the wealth of sugar cane and slave labor. The area was the economic heart of Louisiana's plantation economy. Many plantation houses along this corridor date to the colonial and antebellum periods.
River Road still features several preserved plantation homes open to the public, though most are now museums or private estates. The landscape retains its antebellum character with oak-lined avenues and period architecture. Modern development has encroached on the historically significant corridor.
Visit: Oak Alley Plantation (historic site)
Rue Royale, French Quarter — Louis and Lestat's lair
Louis and Lestat establish their vampire sanctuary in this French Quarter mansion. It is a place of dark elegance where the two vampires live in complex relationship, with Lestat's wild hedonism clashing against Louis's philosophical anguish. Claudia grows up within these walls, bound to both her vampire makers in tortured dependency. The house becomes the stage for their intimate domestic horrors and their eventual descent into mutual betrayal.
The French Quarter (Vieux Carré) was established in 1718 as the original settlement of New Orleans. Rue Royale (now Royal Street) developed as one of the Quarter's most prestigious addresses in the 18th century, lined with colonial and early American period townhouses and mansions built by wealthy merchants and planters.
Royal Street remains one of the most beautiful and historically preserved streets in the French Quarter, lined with galleries, antique shops, restaurants, and carefully maintained 18th and 19th-century architecture. The street is a major tourist destination and part of the National Historic Landmark district.
Visit: French Quarter Walking Tour (tour)
Basin Street at St. Louis Street — The City of the Dead
The cemetery haunts Louis's consciousness as a symbol of mortality and finality he has escaped through vampirism. The above-ground tombs, built in rows like miniature houses, represent the boundary between the living world and death—a threshold Louis has transgressed. The gothic atmosphere of the cemetery permeates the novel's meditation on immortality, decay, and the vampire's paradoxical existence between life and death.
St. Louis Cemetery No. 1, established in 1789, is one of the oldest cemeteries in the United States. Its distinctive above-ground tombs, called 'ovens' or 'vaults,' developed due to New Orleans' high water table and swampy terrain. The cemetery became known as the 'City of the Dead' and represents centuries of New Orleans' multicultural history.
St. Louis Cemetery No. 1 remains one of New Orleans' most iconic and visited sites. It is open to the public and is a National Historic Landmark. The cemetery contains the tombs of Marie Laveau, numerous historical figures, and is a major tourist attraction, though it requires guided tours or respectable self-guided visitation.
Visit: St. Louis Cemetery No. 1 (historic site)
Bourbon Street, Dauphine Street, St. Peter Street — Vampire hunting grounds
The labyrinthine streets of the French Quarter become Louis and Lestat's feeding grounds. Here they hunt the city's poor, enslaved people, and desperate inhabitants under cover of darkness. Louis describes the seductive hunt, the moment when vampire senses heighten and prey becomes inevitable. Bourbon Street's taverns and establishments provide abundant victims, and the Quarter's narrow alleys offer concealment for their predatory existence.
The French Quarter developed as the original city of New Orleans from its founding in 1718. By the 19th century, it was a thriving commercial, residential, and entertainment district populated by merchants, laborers, enslaved people, and free people of color. Its tight grid of streets and dense architecture made it ideal for commerce and commerce-related activities.
The French Quarter remains New Orleans' most historic and densely visited district. Bourbon Street is famous worldwide as an entertainment corridor filled with bars, restaurants, music venues, and shops. The Quarter is a UNESCO-recognized historic area and continues as the cultural heart of the city.
Visit: French Quarter Guided Walking Tour (tour)
Poydras Street — Lestat's performances and entertainment
The theater serves as a metaphor for Lestat's theatrical nature and his seductive, performative approach to vampirism. He treats his existence as a grand performance for an audience, contrasting sharply with Louis's tortured introspection. The playhouses and entertainment venues represent the city's cultural life, which Lestat embraces while Louis resists its seductive frivolity.
New Orleans' Theater District developed along Poydras and adjacent streets in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The Orpheum Theater, opened in 1906, became one of the South's finest performance venues. The district represented the city's cultural sophistication and served as a center for opera, theater, ballet, and classical music.
The Theater District remains a vibrant cultural center. The Orpheum Theater, Saenger Theater, and other historic venues continue to host performances. The district has been revitalized in recent years and remains a destination for arts and culture in New Orleans.
Visit: Orpheum Theater (theater)
Riverfront — Boundary and transportation
The Mississippi River serves as the novel's geographical and spiritual boundary. Louis and Claudia's escape toward Europe is enabled by the river, which offers passage away from Lestat and New Orleans. The river represents both escape and the vast, indifferent natural world that dwarfs human (and vampire) concerns. Its current and power suggest forces beyond individual control.
The Mississippi River has been the lifeblood of New Orleans since the city's founding. It enabled the city's development as a major port and trading center. By the 19th century, steamboats and paddle-wheelers made the river a vital transportation corridor connecting New Orleans to the interior of America.
The Mississippi River remains central to New Orleans' identity and economy. The riverfront has been developed with parks, restaurants, and attractions. The river is accessible via the Riverwalk and other waterfront developments.
Visit: Woldenberg Riverfront Park (park)
St. Peter Street, French Quarter — Spiritual darkness
The church represents the spiritual realm from which Louis feels eternally estranged. His vampirism has created an unbridgeable distance from Christian salvation and human spirituality. He questions whether God exists in a world where immortal predators walk freely. The church symbolizes the moral absolutes Louis can no longer access, making his existence a form of living damnation.
St. Peter Street is one of the French Quarter's oldest streets, dating to the original city plan of 1721. The street was named after Saint Peter and developed as a major residential and commercial thoroughfare. Several churches and religious buildings have occupied locations on this historic street throughout New Orleans' history.
St. Peter Street remains a charming, historic street in the French Quarter lined with colonial and 19th-century architecture. It houses galleries, cafes, restaurants, and residential properties. The street is part of the walkable, pedestrian-friendly French Quarter.
Visit: French Quarter Walking Tour (tour)
South Peters and Tchoupitoulas Streets — Site of human commerce
The slave market represents the moral horrors of Louis's mortal past and the human suffering that surrounded his plantation existence. Rice presents the slavery economy as inextricable from New Orleans' wealth and culture. Louis's vampire predation becomes a dark mirror of the slave trade—both involve the consumption of human bodies and the reduction of people to objects for exploitation.
The slave market at South Peters and Tchoupitoulas Streets operated as a major trading venue for enslaved people in 19th-century New Orleans. It was one of the largest domestic slave markets in America. Thousands of enslaved Africans were bought and sold on these sites, making New Orleans one of the largest slave-trading centers in the United States.
The site is now a parking lot and modern commercial area. A historic marker commemorates the Slave Market's location and historical significance. The area is accessible to the public, though no original structures remain.
Visit: Historic Marker - The Slave Market (historic site)
Tchoupitoulas Street — Gateway to escape and the wider world
The port becomes the crucial setting for Louis and Claudia's desperate attempt to escape New Orleans and Lestat. They book passage aboard ships bound for Europe, seeking freedom and distance from their maker's grip. The port represents the wider world beyond New Orleans—a world of possibility, danger, and unknown futures. Here, Louis's hope for escape and redemption seems briefly possible.
The Port of New Orleans developed as one of America's greatest shipping centers by the 19th century. Steamboats, sailing ships, and merchant vessels connected the port to ports worldwide. The port represented New Orleans' cosmopolitan character and its role as a gateway between American interior and global trade.
The Port of New Orleans remains one of the busiest ports in the United States by cargo volume. The riverfront is accessible via multiple parks and walking paths. The Modern wharves and port facilities are not generally open to the public, but viewing areas exist along the river.
Visit: Woldenberg Park & Riverfront (park)
French Quarter — Claudia's truncated education
Louis attempts to give Claudia a semblance of education and moral formation at a convent school, seeking to instill in her some human morality despite her vampire nature. Claudia attends sporadically, forever marked by her difference from other children. The school represents Louis's desperate attempt to preserve her humanity even as her nature as a vampire makes such efforts futile and tragic.
Convents and convent schools were established throughout the French Quarter from its earliest days. The Ursuline Convent, founded in 1727, remains the oldest building in the Mississippi River Valley. Catholic education in convents was a significant part of New Orleans' cultural and religious development.
The Ursuline Convent is a National Historic Landmark and museum open to the public. It houses exhibits on New Orleans' colonial history and the role of the Ursulines in the city's development. The building is one of the finest examples of French colonial architecture in North America.
Visit: Ursuline Convent Museum (museum)
Bayou country — Wild nature and refuge
The swamplands surrounding New Orleans represent the wild, untamed natural world beyond the city's boundaries. They offer refuge and hunting ground for vampires, where human law and morality hold no sway. The bayou's primordial darkness mirrors the darkness within Louis and Lestat—ancient, indifferent, and utterly unconcerned with human suffering or divine judgment.
The swamplands and bayous surrounding New Orleans developed over millennia through the deposition of Mississippi River sediment. The area supported indigenous peoples for thousands of years and later became a source of timber, furs, and sustenance for French colonial settlers. The bayou landscape shaped New Orleans' culture and ecology fundamentally.
The bayou landscape remains largely unchanged, though wetlands are threatened by erosion and development. Several bayou tour operators offer visits to the wetland environment, and the area is accessible via state lands and wildlife management areas. The Audubon Swamp Tour provides access to the bayou ecosystem.
Visit: Audubon Swamp Tour (tour)
Bourbon Street — Mortal vice and vampire feeding
Bourbon Street's taverns provide the setting for much of the novel's moral conflict over predation and sustenance. Lestat frequents these establishments with casual cruelty, seducing victims and draining them with theatrical flair. Louis lurks in the shadows of these spaces, both participant and horrified observer. The taverns represent the city's moral corruption and the ease with which the weak are consumed.
Bourbon Street developed as the center of New Orleans' entertainment district by the 19th century. Taverns, gambling halls, dance halls, and music venues proliferated, serving sailors, merchants, and working-class men. By the time Rice wrote the novel in the 1970s, Bourbon Street had a long history as a center of adult entertainment and vice.
Bourbon Street remains one of America's most famous entertainment corridors, lined with bars, clubs, restaurants, and shops. The street is heavily touristed and continues as a center of nightlife, music, and drinks. Modern Bourbon Street retains much of the libertine character described in the novel.
Visit: Bourbon Street Tour (tour)
French Quarter center — Public life and mortal concerns
Jackson Square represents the civic center of New Orleans and the realm of mortal public life from which Louis and Lestat are forever separated by their vampirism. The square's bustle of human activity, commerce, and social intercourse emphasizes the isolation of the vampires despite their physical proximity to crowds. The cathedral and its spiritual presence underscore Louis's spiritual estrangement.
Jackson Square, originally called Place d'Armes, was established in 1721 as the center of the original French colonial settlement. The St. Louis Cathedral, begun in 1794, dominates the square. The square served as the civic, military, and religious center of New Orleans throughout its history.
Jackson Square remains the historic heart of the French Quarter and one of America's most visited public squares. The St. Louis Cathedral, Cabildo, and Presbytère are all museum sites. Street performers, artists, and tourists fill the square daily. It is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Visit: Jackson Square and Historic Landmarks (historic site)
Multiple locations — The living dead among the dead
Beyond St. Louis Cemetery No. 1, the various cemeteries of New Orleans provide the novel's recurring meditation on death, immortality, and the uncanny position of vampires in a city obsessed with mortality. Claudia, trapped in her seven-year-old body for decades, becomes increasingly conscious of the grotesque irony of her eternal life. The cemeteries embody the novel's central paradox: the vampires are the living dead, forever separated from both life and death.
New Orleans developed numerous cemeteries due to its swampy terrain, which required above-ground burial in tombs. St. Louis Cemeteries 2 and 3, Greenwood Cemetery, Metairie Cemetery, and others became architectural expressions of cultural and racial hierarchies. The cemetery system reflects New Orleans' complex history of slavery, creolization, and social stratification.
Multiple historic cemeteries remain open to the public as walking sites and tourist destinations. Metairie Cemetery is one of the most beautiful cemeteries in America, featuring elaborate tombs and monuments. Several are accessible via walking tours and are actively maintained historic sites.
Visit: St. Louis Cemetery Walking Tours (tour)
More by Anne Rice: The Witching Hour locations map · The Vampire Lestat locations map · All Anne Rice books
Other nearby maps: The Tin Roof Blowdown by James Lee Burke locations map · City of Refuge by Tom Piazza locations map · Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson locations map · Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe by Fannie Flagg locations map