Why Do We Bury Our Dead Above Ground in New Orleans?
If you’ve ever driven through New Orleans and passed one of our cemeteries, you’ve probably noticed something immediately:
There aren’t many headstones sticking out of a grassy field.
Instead, there are rows and rows of little buildings.
Marble tombs. Brick vaults. Statues. Iron gates. Family names carved into stone. Some are simple. Some look like somebody built Grandma her own tiny Greek temple.
Welcome to what New Orleans has famously called its Cities of the Dead.
And naturally, visitors want to know:
Why in the world do y’all bury people above ground?
The answer usually gets boiled down to one sentence:
Because New Orleans is below sea level.
That’s not exactly wrong.
But the real story is a little more complicated—and much more New Orleans.
First, Yes. We Have a Water Problem.
New Orleans is low, flat, surrounded by water and famous for having a very high water table.
Anyone who has lived in South Louisiana for five minutes knows that water tends to go wherever it pleases.
Digging a deep grave in wet, swampy ground historically presented some fairly obvious problems. Water could seep into graves, and the soft ground wasn't particularly cooperative. Even today, the National Park Service notes that high water tables, flooding and unstable soil create problems for cemeteries in the New Orleans area.
So building upward instead of digging downward made a lot of sense.
But here's where the story gets interesting.
We Didn't Invent Above-Ground Burial Because of the Water
Above-ground tombs weren't some emergency engineering project dreamed up by frustrated New Orleanians holding shovels in a swamp.
The tradition also has strong Spanish and European roots.
New Orleans' earliest cemetery during the French colonial period actually included traditional below-ground burials. The widespread use of above-ground tombs developed later, particularly while Louisiana was under Spanish rule.
St. Louis Cemetery No. 1—the oldest existing cemetery in New Orleans—was established in 1789 during the Spanish colonial period, and above-ground brick tombs became an important part of the cemetery.
Similar burial traditions can be found in Spain and former Spanish colonies.
So the water table helped make above-ground burial extremely practical here.
But European and especially Spanish funerary traditions helped give us the way we did it.
Basically:
New Orleans took an Old World tradition, looked at our swampy ground and said, "Yep. That'll work."
And then, naturally, we made it prettier.
The Tomb Became a Family Home
One of the most interesting things about traditional New Orleans tombs is that many weren't intended for just one person.
They're family tombs.
Generations of the same family can be interred in a single structure. In a city where usable cemetery land was valuable, family tombs also allowed burial space to be reused over time. Historic documentation for St. Louis Cemetery No. 1 specifically notes that families commonly used the same tombs for several generations.
That means when you walk through an old New Orleans cemetery, you're not necessarily looking at one tomb for one person.
You're looking at family histories.
Parents.
Children.
Grandparents.
Great-grandparents.
Sometimes generations of New Orleanians sharing the same final address.
Apparently even in death, we're still keeping everybody together.
And Then We Made the Cemeteries Beautiful
Because this is New Orleans, practicality was never going to be enough.
The tombs became architecture.
Some are modest brick structures covered in plaster. Others have columns, sculptures, stained glass, elaborate ironwork and carved marble.
Walk through one of our historic cemeteries and it genuinely feels like walking through a miniature city.
There are pathways that resemble streets.
Rows of structures.
Family names on the fronts.
Tiny architectural styles changing from one "house" to another.
It's easy to understand how New Orleans cemeteries earned the nickname Cities of the Dead. Above-ground tombs became so concentrated in southern Louisiana that they developed into one of the region's most recognizable cultural landscapes.
No, Coffins Aren't Just Floating Around New Orleans
This deserves its own section because eventually somebody is going to ask.
There's a long-running story told to tourists that New Orleans has to bury everyone above ground because otherwise coffins will simply pop out of the earth and float away every time it rains.
It's a fantastic story.
It's also an oversimplification.
Flooding and saturated soil absolutely created real problems for traditional burials, and the high water table helped make above-ground tombs especially practical. But historians point out that environmental conditions alone don't completely explain the tradition. Spanish cultural influence was important too.
So if someone tells you the entire tradition exists because "the coffins float," you now have permission to politely ruin the story with historical facts.
More Than a Cemetery
That's really what makes New Orleans cemeteries so fascinating.
They're not simply a quirky solution to soggy ground.
They're a combination of geography, necessity, religion, architecture, European influence and generations of local tradition.
They're another example of something New Orleans does exceptionally well:
Take a problem.
Add a few hundred years of different cultures.
Make it beautiful.
Give it a nickname.
And turn it into something you won't find quite the same way anywhere else.
So the next time you pass one of those whitewashed tombs behind an old iron fence, remember:
You're not just looking at people buried above ground because New Orleans is wet.
You're looking at hundreds of years of New Orleans history—built one family tomb at a time.
Featuring original artwork by Frank Dutreil