Old Absinthe House

The building at 240 Bourbon Street was completed in 1806 for the importing firm of Catalan merchants and first operated as a grocery. Its first floor was converted to a saloon in the mid-1830s (the official site cites a first liquor license in 1835), run from the 1840s by the Aleix family as a coffee house, and by 1869 it was advertised as the Absinthe House. Around 1870 bartender Cayetano Ferrer, formerly of the French Opera House, joined and in 1874 created the famous Absinthe House Frappe, cementing the bar's reputation. During Prohibition a federal judge enforcing the Volstead Act ordered the saloon's contents sold at public auction, and the original marble-topped absinthe bar moved down the street to 400 Bourbon Street. The bar at 240 Bourbon reopened after Prohibition and remains one of the French Quarter's best-known historic bars.

Legend — promoted by the bar but unproven by historians — holds that Andrew Jackson and pirate Jean Lafitte met in an upstairs room to plan the defense of New Orleans before the 1815 Battle of New Orleans; documented later patrons include Mark Twain and Oscar Wilde.

What to order: The Absinthe House Frappe (absinthe, sugar, and water — the 'green monster'), created behind this bar by Cayetano Ferrer in 1874.