Metairie Cemetery
Egyptian-style marble pyramid guarded by a sphinx, built by a grieving father as a family tomb.
Location
About this audio guide
This guide to Metairie Cemetery in New Orleans follows pharmaceutical merchant Lucien Brunswig through the spring of 1892, when he lost his young son just weeks before his tenth birthday and then, a month later, his wife Annie. It traces the unusual choice he made to answer that grief, building a full Egyptian tomb complete with a sphinx, coiled cobras, and a winged sun disk, rather than the obelisks and weeping angels his wealthy neighbors were racing to put up around him. Around it, New Orleans' wealthiest families were already competing to out-build one another on this old racetrack turned cemetery. Stand close to the pyramid and look up at the sphinx's cracked, unblinking stare.
This audio guide was created using AI.
Similar places
St. Louis Cemetery No. 2
Above-ground Catholic cemetery of grand tombs where a pardoned pirate rests beneath a Masonic emblem.
St. Louis Cemetery No. 1
Above-ground tombs behind an iron gate, where tourists still play a century-old wishing game.
Lafayette Cemetery No. 1
Above-ground brick tombs where families reuse the same vault after a year and a day of decomposition.
Saint Roch Chapel
Gothic chapel and healing shrine whose side room is lined floor to ceiling with braces, glass eyes and plaster limbs left by the cured.
Tulane University
Uptown campus where a grieving mother's fortune built the nation's first coordinate women's college.
Whitney Plantation
Former sugar plantation turned solemn memorial museum devoted entirely to the history of slavery.