Oak and Laurel Cemetery Preservation, LLC 4416 Painters Street, New Orleans, LA 70122

"Amazing!"

"Best . Damned. Mason....Beautiful"

"Cemeteries are a unique tourist attraction in NOLA. The cemeteries here do not charge taxes and are sold by the government but not managed by the government. Because of NOLA's unique geographical conditions (a city washed out by the Mississippi River), there is constantly flowing soil under the swamp. Not only can buried corpses not be fixed in one place, but they can easily surface when it rains heavily. Therefore, tombs were built on the land for each family unit and fixed with stone masts. The facade of the stone masts on the ground was mostly made of marble. The coffin itself was made of cement mixture. The burial process is carried out in a stone pit to take advantage of NOLA's hot weather. The hollow part of the stone pit is divided into two layers: the upper layer is responsible for "burning" the body, and the lower layer is responsible for storing the ashes. The corpse is placed on the top of the silo to act like a crematorium in the summer (the principle is similar to that of an oven, and the "indoor" temperature can reach 176 degrees Celsius). Afterwards, the dried ashes will be taken out and placed on the lower floor of the Zang (the lower layer of the Zang is called the Caveau). Bodies are usually reduced to ashes after a year under a natural fire and stacked in the caveau below. This saves space and allows family members to reunite after death. The earliest cemetery in NOLA dates back to 1789 (the same year the French Revolution broke out lol). In the mid-19th century when a disease (yellow fever) broke out, the number of deaths in NOLA increased so much that multiple bodies had to be placed in one coffin. This method of burial came into being. It is said that this method of burning and burying corpses has also been adopted by other countries in the world (such as Argentina) for the same reason (moving mud?) Every culture has its own understanding of death. You can always find clues of this in cemeteries. We recommend travelers to NOLA to check it out."