Notice the plaza at the heart of the oldest European settlement west of the Mississippi, platted by the French as the Place d'Armes in 1721. The French platted this plaza as the Place d'Armes in 1721, three years after the city's founding, designed as a military parade ground in the classic colonial grid with the river at its face and the church at its back. The Spanish colonial government renamed it the Plaza de Armas and rebuilt the surrounding structures after a catastrophic fire in 1788 destroyed most of the French city.
After the Louisiana Purchase, the square was renamed for Andrew Jackson, who defeated the British at the Battle of New Orleans in January 1815 — a battle fought two weeks after the war officially ended, before news of the peace treaty reached Louisiana. Clark Mills's equestrian statue at the center, unveiled in 1856, was the first equidistant statue in the world: the horse balances on its two hind legs without any other support. The fortune tellers and street artists who surround the square today have worked this ground for generations.
Look toward the river: the levee that keeps the Mississippi from flooding the city is just beyond the park. New Orleans sits below sea level, held in place by an engineering system as audacious as the city itself.