New Orleans is a significant United States port and the biggest city and metropolitan range in the state of Louisiana. It is one of the top ten most visited cities in the United States it was created by French settlers and emphatically affected by their and African societies. It is well known for its unique French and Spanish Creole construction modeling, and additionally its culturally diverse and multilingual legacy. New Orleans is additionally celebrated for its food, music (especially as the origination of jazz), and its yearly festivals and celebrations, most strikingly Mardi Gras, dating to French frontier times. The city is regularly alluded to as the "most unique" in the United States.

New Orleans is placed in southeastern Louisiana, straddling the Mississippi River. The city and Orleans Parish are coterminous. New Orleans has numerous real attractions, from the widely acclaimed French Quarter and Bourbon Street's famous nightlife to St. Charles Avenue (home of Tulane and Loyola Universities, the memorable Pontchartrain Hotel, and numerous nineteenth century manors), to Magazine Street, with its numerous boutique stores and obsolescent shops.

A 2009 Travel + Leisure survey of "America's Favorite Cities" positioned New Orleans first in ten classifications, the most ahead of all comers rankings of the 30 urban areas included. As indicated by the survey, New Orleans is the best U.S. city as a spring break objective and for "wild weekends", snappy boutique inns, mixed drink hours, singles/bar scenes, unrecorded music/shows and groups, obsolescent and vintage shops, joints/espresso bars, neighborhood restaurants, and people viewing.

The metropolitan area is served by the Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport, located in the suburb of Kenner. New Orleans also has several regional airports located throughout the metropolitan area. These include the Lakefront Airport, Naval Air Station Joint Reserve Base New Orleans (locally known as Callendar Field) in the suburb of Belle Chasse and "Southern Seaplane", also located in Belle Chasse. Southern Seaplane has a 3,200-foot (980 m) runway for wheeled planes and a 5,000-foot (1,500 m) water runway for seaplanes. New Orleans International suffered some damage as a result of Hurricane Katrina, but as of April 2007, it contained the most traffic and is the busiest airport in the state of Louisiana and the sixth busiest in the Southeast.