Gallier House

Gallier House is a great stop for a hot New Orleans afternoon—just be sure to make a reservation in advance. The guided tour was very informative, offering a fascinating look into the history of the Gallier family and the impressive architectural contributions of Mr. Gallier himself. It’s a wonderful way to step back in time and gain a deeper appreciation for 19th-century New Orleans life and design. Highly recommended for history and architecture buffs alike!

This tour was a highlight of my trip! I came because I was interested in shooting locations from AMC’s Interview with the Vampire and in local history and architecture. The tour was detailed and fascinating, and my tour guide was clearly extremely knowledgeable—I felt open to ask many questions and got great answers in return! Gallier being an architect and designing his house to be on the cutting edge for the time and testing out his own inventions to manage the climate (such as various ventilation systems) made for a unique historical and architectural experience. The set up of the tour and the way you’re brought through how the family lived day to day also made for a cool experience—I felt like I could really visualize what their lives were like in a way that you just can’t at a traditional museum. Fantastic tour and great value! Highly recommend.

Absolutely take the tour! 12:30 on a Sunday it was just 4 of us. We were all able to ask a lot of questions and our guide was so knowledgeable with an answer for everything. Really incredible to see the history and thoughtful care in restoration.

This is a guided tour and our tour guide was very informative and took time to answer any questions we had. The displays were beautiful and really took you back in time. Like most places in New Orleans there are stairs and narrow walkways but nothing that we couldn't access.

Whenever I travel, I always try to visit houses that have significant historical value, and Gallier House was one of them. The house is well-maintained and takes you back to that time. Special thanks to our tour guide for giving us a chance to dive into history.

This tour was one of the highlights of our time in New Orleans! The architectural details and the preservation of this house are exquisite. Our tour guide was Peter and he was absolutely fantastic - incredibly knowledgeable and patient with the groups many questions. Great delivery and was factual yet sensitive around the harder historical aspects of slavery. Would highly recommend this tour to anyone!

Great informative tour and very beautifully kept historic house. Definitely recommend. (This house was also an inspiration to Anne Rice when she was writing Interview with a Vampire)

Hands down a must visit in NOLA! Our tour guide, Judith, was just incredible: I and my two friends were the only ones to arrive for the early Sunday morning tour, and she really took the time to connect with each of us to tailor the tour to our interests. The Gallier home is gorgeously maintained, they don’t sugarcoat the realities of slavery in the area, and we learned so much! 10/10 for the location itself, and 100/10 for Judith!

Another great urban house. Just four of us on the tour and we got great info from our guide who had been drafted in to cover an emergency. Built in 1861, by local architect James Gallier, Jr. as his private family residence, this Victorian French Quarter townhouse exemplifies architectural features that are not only unique to New Orleans, but also innovative and advanced for the period. Marked by an iconic Paris Green gate, the Royal street home includes an ornate interior décor, running hot and cold water, experimental skylight, intact attached slave quarters, and classic courtyard. Another American Horror Story "Coven" stop on your tour. See if you can get on Leah the Magnificent's tour. She was off when we went but we had her at Herman Grimma and she is the best.

I love a museum that showcases a pieces of history by allowing you to move through the space. It was informative and I do appreciate the respect used to tell the story of all of the individuals in household. Glad that I decided to stop in at the last minute.

We took the nighttime Death and Mourning tour and it was so acceptable and educational. We learned so much about Victorian life in New Orleans, from the perspective of both the affluent and the enslaved. Our tour guide(who's name i can't remember, so sorry!) was such a pleasure to listen to and made the entire tour so enjoyable.

My sister and I booked a tour here (Creole death and mourning) and had a great time. Our guide Danielle was terrific, informative, and personable and handled the house's history of enslavement in a sensitive and caring way. Note: this house has one very steep set of stairs and several level changes between rooms, call for accommodation options ahead of time if you use mobility aids. We both love fiber arts and material culture, Danielle knew a lot about where the textiles and needlework came from, the role it played in the lives of the women in the house, and how home goods and clothing would have played in the rituals of the time. She was able to connect our questions to the history and steer us to more information at the sister property and in the gift shop. We picked up "Creole Cookery" and "Luxury, Inequity and Yellow Fever: Living Legacies and the Story of Old New Orleans" from the gift shop and will be back next time for the historical cooking demonstration and a tour of the Herman-Grima house.

The Herman-Grima house and the Gallier house are owned by the same people, the Herman-Grima house tour focuses more on the point of view of the enslaved, while the Gallier house focuses on the point of view of the owner. The person who first owned this, and who designed and built this, was an architect, and put in the most modern convenances of that time into this house. It was the last built on this block and next to a water bottling company, so it was noisy. The house is very lovely, and the features were amazing to behold. An indoor toilet and bath! An indoor kitchen! This house was a short walk from all things popular in the Quarter, but worth the visit. Leah, the docent, was a wealth of information. I am so very glad that I came on this tour. If you are local, come by. If you are a visitor, come by. You will not regret it.

We had a great time! The house was super well-preserved, and our tour guide Katie was FANTASTIC. She was very knowledgeable and gave a wonderful tour. Definitely a highlight of our trip!!!

Our tour of this house was the highlight of our visit to New Orleans. The house was fascinating with a combination of a beautiful home and great insights to the lives of enslaved people who lived there. The tour guide brought the whole house alive with lots of insights on New Orleans too. The house is a short walk from other attractions in the French Quarter of New Orleans.

The Gallier House was such a nice retreat from the hectic Bourbon Street area. Walking in, it felt so peaceful and air-conditioned! They gave me $5 off because I showed them my receipt for the Hermann-Grima House. It's pretty much intact and still contains much of the furnishings from when the family used to live in there. You get in with a guided your guide. It seems as if everybody comes to New Orleans to party even though they say they're interested in the history. This place is relatively under appreciated.

Did this and Hermann Grima house. I have no favorites. Both were great. If you have time and dont mind being inundated with history then do both. Olive was our tour guide. Soothing voice, very informative, answered every question the group had about family, life in the mid 1800s and about the architectural features of the home. Tour took about an hour. Loved how the Hermann Grima/Gallier house tours approached slavery in the South. Our guides did a fantastic job of humanizing the enslaved in New Orleans which offered a much needed sobering perspective when viewing these opulent homes.

This is the building that is featured in the new TV series, "Interview with a Vampire" as Lestat's home.

We really enjoyed our tour here. The guide knew his stuff and did not mince words when describing the realities of urban slavery and Creole family life. He also kept us engaged with an inductive teaching approach, so I really learned a lot (also, it helped that we were the only ones on the 11 AM Sunday morning tour!) The house is richly appointed and feels very authentic: You can easily picture the family and slaves going about their daily routines. I got more out of this tour than any of the tours I did on Plantation Row. The house does have slight mildew smell probably due to the elements so you may need an allergy pill if you are sensitive to mold. But it's worth it.

We were unable to do a tour but went inside of the information place and the staff was so friendly. A nice guy who worked there took us around and showed us a few special spots of the Gallier House and taught us some of the history involved with it. He was very helpful and was nice enough to do the quick walk around tour with us. They do ask you make a small donation which is definitely okay as it goes towards keeping up with restoration and protection of the house. Would highly recommend this place to all visiting New Orleans and thank you to the staff for being so kind.

This is such a cool little museum! Stopped by for Museum Month and was not disappointed. The house is so well preserved and accurately portrayed, I thought I'd stepped back in time (except for the AC of course!). HIGHLY recommended a guided tour. Our guide was EXCELLENT and personable. As an interpretive guide myself, I really appreciated her technique and delivery. It did justice to such a special place. Well worth a visit! You can also hop over to their sister site, the Herman-Grima house, which is in walking distance. While I think more emphasis is given to Herman-Grima, I think the Gallier house is the true gem. With interesting inventions, this museum would interest engineers as well as historians!

This is a great tour of an old New Orleans landmark home. The Gallier house was designed by the eponymous architect and will give you an insight into mid 19th century life in New Orleans. Destiny, was our knowledgeable tour guide and provided an informative and interesting tour. She put the house in its historical context and vividly described the everyday life of the Gallier family. This is a fun and interesting tour and is a great way to see an old french quarter home. Highly recommend.

We randomly went to the Gallier house for a tour. Our tour was lead by Jacob Williams and he was super informative. The house is so beautiful and weird. The tour went for about a good 45 minutes. We got to take pictures throughout looking around. This was a nice tour to stop at!

My little nieces (OK so the 11 year old is taller than me, whatever) and I stopped by Gallier House for a tour a few Mondays ago. (Yes open on Monday!) Our tourguide gave us a great tour of the house which is currently wearing it's summer style. The rugs have been picked up in favor of strawmats and the chandeliers, pictures and furniture is draped as if the windows were open to save them from bugs and sweaty people. But don't worry they have all the modern A/C for us wimpy folks. This is an historical house so expect stairs. Tours are at 10, 12 & 2 Monday-Tuesday and Thursday-Friday and 12, 1 & 2 on Saturday. And there is online booking: http://www.hgghh.org/exhibit/gallier-house/ I was surprised at how interested both the 8 and 11 year olds were to learn about the house. They were sort of intrigued/horrified to learn about chamberpots and from then on they were hooked. The tour does include old slave rooms and the guide did discuss slavery with the girls after being certain that they had learned about it in school. The tour includes the living room, kitchen, a peek into the pantry, the dining room, sitting rooms, bedrooms, bathroom (inside!). The building has been restored beautifully and I can't wait to go back to see the mourning style (for Halloween) or dressed for the holidays. Definitely a great historical house. They typical tour (depending on group size) only lasts about 60 to 90 minutes, I think.

October 2015 You are not able to take photographs inside the home. I was one of four on the 10 o'clock tour, and the only one under 40. The home was wonderfully restored back to the 1850's. They were able to get a manifest of the homes inventory from insurance records, and find pieces that matched. The tour was a little over an hour long. I found it highly entertaining to see a home from that period, learn about New Orleans Architecture, and learn about one of their most prominent and influential persons of the city.

Very interesting & informative tour. The guide encouraged questions -- and answered very professionally. Gives a great sense for an upper-middle class lifestyle at the end of the ante-bellum era in New Orleans. The house itself was very up-to-date (in the 1850s) and had some really innovative features -- like an indoor bathroom and an attached kitchen; easy to take for granted today but very rare in the days before a municipal water & sewerage system. The furnishings are all period-appropriate and/or close approximations to what the Gallier's had in place. The tour lasted just a bit under an hour.

We enjoyed very much the visit of the house. Warren was our tour guide and he was very knowledgeable , answering very well our questions. The tour lasts almost one hour starting outside in the street and going through all floors, rooms, backyard. We learned a lot about slave workers. It felt like special tour since we took the first one at 10am and we were the only ones in the group which makes easier to take photos and interact with the guide. I would definitely recommend this tour if you really want to feel how a New Orleans french/italian was back in 18th century.

This was a great tour. Our tour guide, Peter, knew everything about the home and family, down to the contents of their inventories and ledgers, and answered every (nerdy) specific question we had! The house is beautifully preserved and the tour gave so much context on the house itself, the family, and society during the time frame. HIGHLY recommend!

Hidden gem of a tour! One of the best tours I've ever been on in the French Quarter! If you love history, architecture, or interior design, you will love this tour! Its so interesting and a very cool experience, plus the tour guides are awesome and so knowledgable!

Very disappointed. Our tour was cancelled due to rain on 3/11. I understand that the rain was much less than initially expected as schools were also cancelled. However, it was just rain! Being from Florida, where we cancel nothing under hurricane level, I was very sad to see this. I guess after Katrina and the reports of bad flooding more north, they are a little more cancel button happy than I expected.

Enjoyed the tour immensely - beautiful furnishings and household artifacts throughout the home. Informative and fun tour guide lead us though the home and spared no details! Well worth the price of admission!

This is a must visit in New Orleans. A beautifully restored home in the quarter. The docent was incredibly knowledgeable and enthusiastic. What a wonderful job the Women's Exchange Organization has done. A must see, especially as a package with the Hermann-Grima House. Very thoughtfully and respectfully executed in every detail.