Louisiana State Museum Cabildo

The Louisiana State Museum Cabildo is the museum occupying the historic Cabildo building at 701 Chartres Street on Jackson Square in New Orleans, Louisiana. The building was constructed between 1795 and 1799 as the seat of Spanish colonial government, and its council chamber was the site of the 1803 ceremony transferring the Louisiana Territory from France to the United States. After serving as city hall and then as the Louisiana Supreme Court, where the Homer Plessy case was heard in 1892 before reaching the U.S. Supreme Court, it became part of the Louisiana State Museum in 1911. A fire in 1988 damaged the upper floors and roof, and a restoration reopened the museum in the 1990s with updated galleries. The museum's permanent exhibition, titled Louisiana: Revolution to Reconstruction, presents the state's history in chronological and thematic galleries, beginning with Native American societies and French and Spanish colonisation and moving through the Louisiana Purchase, the Battle of New Orleans, the growth of the port, the antebellum economy and slavery, secession, the Civil War and Reconstruction. Objects on display include maps, firearms, portraits, furniture, decorative arts, a death mask of Napoleon Bonaparte, and documents tied to the Purchase. The galleries address the lives of enslaved people, free people of colour and immigrants alongside governors and merchants. Architecturally the building is a Spanish colonial structure with arcades, iron balconies, and a mansard roof added in 1847, and its interior includes the Sala Capitular, where the Purchase documents were signed. Temporary exhibitions complement the permanent displays, and visitors often buy a combined ticket with the neighbouring Presbytere. A full visit takes 60 to 90 minutes. The museum is closed on Mondays.