New Orleans Garden District, Movie, and TV Walking Tour

The tour meets and starts at the front gate of Lafayette Cemetery #1, where Double Jeopardy was filmed. This cemetery is an extremely popular site location for filming, as it is evocative and eerie, with many above-ground crypts and tombs.

Right off, you will see a site where a scene from NCIS New Orleans’ Halloween episode.

The tour will then head over to a tomb that has no burials recorded within it. You will learn more about New Orleans burial practices and why most people buried their dead above, rather than below, the ground.

The next tomb you visit will be the tomb that horror writer Anne Rice used as the slumber and hiding place for the Vampire Lestat in The Vampire Chronicles.

Just a few feet way is where production companies built temporary tombs for the filming of The Originals and Double Jeopardy.

The Originals is another favorite TV show filmed in the Lafayette Cemetery 1. As we walk through the cemetery, you will see the various places they filmed key moments of the show.

Your guide will then lead you to the beautiful Secret Garden, a setting for the emotional scene from Interview with the Vampire where Louis submitted to Lestat to become a vampire himself.

Leaving the cemetery, you’ll be taken past the Commander’s Palace, a world-renowned restaurant where Paul Prudhomme and Emeril Lagasse once worked and many celebrities such as novelist Anne Rice and actor John Goodman are frequent patrons.

The tour will then pass the house from the Curious Case of Benjamin Button. Tour members will hear how a local couple ended up getting cast in the movie.

Across the street is actress Sandra Bullock’s residence.

Next, you will visit the Catholic Rectory, which has a colorful past; in fact, it became Anne Rice’s guest house before being bought by actor Nick Cage. You might not be surprised to know that it has a haunted history too!

The next stop on the tour is John Goodman’s house, which had previously been the home of rockstar Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails.

For our sports fans, you will even get to see New Orleans Saints football legend Archie Manning’s home. This is the area where Eli and Payton grew up and played catch on the streets with their father. Next door is a house where scenes from the move JFK were filmed.

Then it’s a bit further on to the house on First Street where Anne Rice once lived. The house was also the inspirational setting for Rice’s The Mayfair Witches in the Witching Hour chronicles.


Before finishing the tour, you’ll be shown the film locations for some scenes from NCIS New Orleans and American Horror Story – Freak Show.

The final stop on the tour is the imposing Gothic building, the Buckner Mansion, which was used in the filming of American Horror Story and is famously referred to as the Coven House, after the series of the same name.