Old Ursuline Convent Museum

The Old Ursuline Convent features a heavy, dark cypress door set into a plain, sun-bleached stucco facade on Chartres Street. Built in seventeen fifty-two, it remains the oldest surviving building in the Mississippi River Valley. When the nuns arrived from France, they found a city of mud and wooden shacks, so they constructed this sturdy home to serve as a school, a hospital, and an orphanage. Sister Madeleine Hachard wrote home that the girls here spent their days spinning, sewing, and learning to read.