The New Year’s Day attack in New Orleans targeted the French Quarter, one of the US city’s most famous districts. The area is visited by millions each year as a hub for music, culture and raucous nightlife.
Founded in 1718, the neighbourhood is also known as the Vieux Carre – or “Old Quarter” – and is the historic colonial centre of the city in the southern state of Louisiana.
Today, it is also the city’s economic heart, attracting visitors from around the world to its streets lined by colourful buildings, many featuring antique balconies held up by cast-iron columns, known locally as galleries.
In 2022, New Orleans hosted more than 17.5 million visitors, with tourism generating an estimated $9.1bn in revenue, according to the New Orleans and Company non-profit group.
Many of those tourists would have visited or stayed in the six-by-13-block French Quarter, located on the banks of the Mississippi River.
The area is home to just a few thousand locals, but hosts some of the city’s busiest hotels, restaurants and thoroughfares. The attack took place on Bourbon Street, an area famed for its bars and music venues, in a city where locals say jazz was first invented by freed enslaved people in the 19th century.
The street – named for the former French royal family – is the main artery feeding the city’s tourist nightlife, with people often carrying their drinks in “go-cups” as they walk down the promenade.
Footage posted on social media, purportedly of the moments before the attack, appeared to show just that – New Year’s night revellers bopping to music and spilling out of nearby bars as police officers ran past them to respond to an unseen commotion.
The French Quarter is passed by many parades during the city’s annual celebration of Carnival, which culminates with Mardi Gras – or Fat Tuesday – a little more than a month before Easter. It is the most popular event on the city’s calendar, attracting both locals and visitors from around the world to enjoy marching bands, floats, and raucous partying.
The parades feature “krewes” – a type of social club, each with a unique history and theme – who typically each organise a parade of floats [they don’t compete officially but take pride in trying to put on a better show than their counterparts]. Some krewes of walking revelers even parade through the French Quarter itself, providing a different kind of spectacle than the ones involving floats that pass by the edge of the historic neighborhood.
With Agence France-Presse
