The Faubourg Marigny doesn’t have corporate hotels. It has converted cottages, repurposed churches, and bars with rooms above them. If the French Quarter is the city’s stage, the Marigny is the neighborhood where the musicians actually live.
Royal Street Inn & R Bar – 1431 Royal St., Marigny
This is the most New Orleans thing on the list. You check in with the bartender. The R Bar on the ground floor serves as front desk, lobby, and neighborhood dive all at once, and when you get to your room upstairs, there are drink tokens on the pillow. The inn describes itself as a “bed and beverage,” which is accurate: there’s no breakfast, but there is a $2 High Life on the chalkboard downstairs and a Monday night special where a visiting barber sets up in the center of the bar offering haircuts and a shot for ten dollars.
Five rooms wrap around and above the bar, ranging from compact studios to a top-floor penthouse with wrap-around balcony views of the Marigny rooflines. The rooms run surprisingly well-appointed given the dive bar DNA of the ground floor: Sonos speakers, in-room espresso, Italian linens. One block from the French Quarter, one block from Frenchmen Street. Located at 1431 Royal St.
Hotel Peter and Paul – 2317 Burgundy St., Marigny
Sts. Peter and Paul Catholic Church opened in 1860 to serve the Irish Catholic community of the Marigny. The elementary school followed in 1900, the convent in 1890, and the rectory circa 1875. The school closed in 1992, the church in 2001, and the whole campus sat deteriorating on its city block until Marigny resident and developer Nathalie Jordi partnered with New York design firm ASH NYC to bring it back. The result is 71 guest rooms spread across three of the four buildings, with the original church preserved as a community event space.
ASH NYC kept the cypress wood mouldings, marble fireplaces, wainscoted corridors, and stained-glass windows intact while layering in bold floor-by-floor color palettes drawn from 14th-to-18th-century religious paintings: golden yellow, emerald green, sapphire blue, and ruby red on successive floors of the schoolhouse. The former performance stage is now a guest lounge, its backdrop mural depicting the set of the school’s very first production in 1900. TheElysian Bar, run in collaboration with the team behind James Beard-nominated Bacchanal Wine Bar, serves live music every night in the former parlors and courtyard. Book via ash.world.
Blue60 Marigny Inn – Elysian Fields Ave., Marigny
Built in 1842, this six-room guesthouse on Elysian Fields has been operating as a locally run inn with each room individually decorated by local artists. The Desire Suite is named for the streetcar line and the Tennessee Williams play. The Ignatius J. Reilly Studio nods to the protagonist of A Confederacy of Dunces. The River Suite faces the street with windows looking toward the Mississippi. The back garden has a hot tub sheltered by palm trees.
One block from Frenchmen Street and ten minutes on foot from the French Quarter, Blue60 is built for the traveler who wants a residential address over a hotel experience. Private outdoor entrances on every room, 600-thread-count sheets, complimentary coffee and tea, and a grocery store directly across the street. Rated the number one guesthouse in New Orleans on TripAdvisor. Book via marignyinn.com.
The Frenchmen Hotel – 417 Frenchmen St., Marigny
We covered The Frenchmen Hotel before, but it belongs on this list for obvious reasons: it sits directly on the music strip, has a hidden pool courtyard that pulls all the noise away, and its 27 rooms in three 1860s cottages capture exactly the kind of eccentric, art-forward Marigny sensibility this list is built around. Midnight Revival on the ground floor hosts live music nightly and is open to locals and guests alike. Book via thefrenchmenhotel.com.
