The Old Ursuline Convent at 1114 Chartres St (tours Tues-Fri hourly except noon 10am-3pm, Sat & Sun 11.15am, 1pm & 2pm; $5), built in 1745, is the only intact French colonial structure in the city, and quite possibly the oldest building in the Mississippi valley. It's one of the many places in the Quarter that are said to be haunted, its corridors roamed by specters of the "casket girls" - white virgins shipped over in the early days of the colony, who were kept here before being sold off as wives in an attempt to stop the increasing number of couplings between French settlers and African or Native American women. Inside the wonderfully peaceful building you can see a mishmash of religious paraphernalia, including the "Doorway to Heaven," a heavy wooden table on which bishops lay in state in St Louis Cathedral. The Beauregard-Keyes House , opposite at no. 1113 (tours hourly Mon-Sat 10am-3pm; $5), owes its name to Confederate General Pierre Beauregard - who ordered the first shot of the Civil War at Fort Sumter and rented a room here during Reconstruction - and to popular novelist Frances Parkinson Keyes. She refurbished this "raised cottage" (with the basement at ground level) as her winter home in the 1940s, and her possessions now fill what is essentially a museum of decorative arts. Keyes' novels - including Madame Castel's Lodger , a romance about the house's "Beauregard period" - are on sale in the gift shop.

A block north at 1132 Royal St, the handsome Gallier House , dating from 1857, is a fascinating little museum (tours every 30min Mon-Fri 10am-3.30pm; $6, $10 with the Hermann-Grima House). James Gallier Jr was a leading architect of the day, and the innovative features he designed for his home, such as the outdoor cistern and cooling system, indoor plumbing and above-ground storage, soon became essential for anyone wanting to live in comfort in this swampy climate. Meanwhile, the house's filigree cast-iron balconies would have been the last word in chic. Tours, which focus as much on social history as fine furniture, are some of the liveliest in the Quarter.

A rare example of the French Quarter's early, West Indies-style architecture, Madame John's Legacy , just off Royal at 628 Dumaine St (Tues-Sun 9am-5pm; $3), was rebuilt after the fire of 1788 as an exact replica of the 1730 house that had previously stood on the site. It was constructed using the briquete entre poteaux technique, in which soft red brick is set between hand-hewn cypress beams, and raised off the ground on stucco-covered brick pillars. The deep wraparound gallery provided extra living space, cooler and airier than the indoor rooms. It's now home to an intriguing museum of Southern folk art, with an interpretative exhibition details the house's various inhabitants and changes in fortune.

Back on Royal Street, beyond Jackson Square at no. 533, the superb Historic New Orleans Collection stands proud among the neighboring antique stores and chichi art galleries. Entry to the streetfront gallery (Tues-Sat 10am-4.30pm), which holds temporary exhibitions, is free, but to see the best of the collection you'll need to take a guided tour (10am, 11am, 2pm & 3pm; $4). These might cover the galleries upstairs, where fascinating exhibits - including old maps, drawings and early publicity posters - fill a series of themed rooms, or they might venture into the Williams House, behind the museum beyond a courtyard. The Williamses, prominent citizens in the 1930s, filled their home with unusual, exotic objects - Chinese burial art, samovar lamps, antique maps - and the house is a must for anyone interested in design and decorative arts.

The quirky Historical Pharmacy Museum , in an old apothecary a block towards the river at 514 Chartres St (Tues-Sun 10am-5pm; $2; free with a Le Monde Creole walking tour), offers intriguing snippets into the history of medicine. On the ground floor, hand-carved rosewood cabinets are cluttered with gris-gris , dusty jars of leeches for blood-letting (to remove irritability) and various unpleasant-looking drills and corkscrews; upstairs there's a whole section devoted to women's medicine - with a fine range of Creole "tonics" used to cure "all the various form of female weakness" - that's enough to make your eyes water.

In 1910, when the Quarter was at its most run-down, an entire block, bounded by Royal, St Louis, Chartres and Conti, was demolished to make way for a colossal new courthouse. A Beaux Arts behemoth of marble and terracotta, in the 1950s the building was abandoned in favor of more modern premises in the CBD, and eventually fell into disuse. It's currently being restored to house the Louisiana Supreme Court , and though the sheer scale of the place is an incongruous sight in the narrow streets of the Quarter, its glossy veined marble facade, gleaming behind huge green palms, makes it an undeniably handsome one.

Chartres and Royal streets

• Chartres and Royal streets

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