Since 1872, revelers on Mardi Gras Day have danced to the tune “If Ever I Cease to Love” and waved to the self-proclaimed “King of Carnival” as the Rex parade wound its way through the city of New Orleans. To mark the 150th anniversary of the founding of the Rex, The Historic New Orleans Collection unveils Fit for a King, an exhibition showcasing jewels, favors, doubloons, float designs, and more from THNOC’s Rex-related holdings, which number in the thousands.

You can feel it coming. A marching band cadence echoes from a mile away. Pounding drums and bright feathers flare from the Mardi Gras Indians just up the block. Months of painstaking glittering, marching, beadwork, and brushstrokes have led up to this moment, and you are ready to burst into the street. It’s Mardi Gras in New Orleans.

Historic maps reveal so much about the geographic understanding, priorities, and preconceptions of their makers, the governmental entities that commissioned them, and the audience for which they were intended. An early 17th-century map of America by Flemish publisher Jodocus Hondius was the first item in the museum’s holdings, and over the last 45 years, the institution’s map collection has continued to grow. Cartographic Legacies showcases a selection of noteworthy maps collected by L.

Jackson Square, or the Place d’Armes, as it was originally known, began to take its shape in August 1721, when French engineers laid out a plan for the new colonial capital of La Louisiane.