Pirate's Alley
Pirate's Alley is a narrow 600-foot cobblestone passage beside St. Louis Cathedral, laid out as Orleans Alley South in the late 1700s and only renamed in 1964, its title likely borrowed from a 1920s gift shop rather than any proven dealings of the privateer Jean Lafitte. The alley sits hemmed by the Cabildo and the old Spanish prison, the Calabozo, whose stones still anchor its buildings.
Local lore holds that in the small hours a lone figure walks the worn cobbles, some calling him the privateer Reginald Hicks, others Lafitte himself, only to dissolve before anyone draws near. Visitors to Faulkner House Books report the phantom pipe smoke of William Faulkner, who wrote his first novel here in 1925, while passersby claim to hear the disembodied singing of Père Dagobert, who buried the executed.
📍 Pirate's Alley, New Orleans, LA · Get directions