New Orleans lingers on the threshold between the Old World and the New, between history and legend: the City that Care Forgot.

Jazz streams out into the moonlight, French doors open to the night breezes, sweet olive scents the air. Nearby there is laughter, a cork popping, and cafe brulot aflame.

Welcome to New Orleans.

Here, in this little corner of the American South, where European traditions blend with Caribbean influences, the history is as colorful as the local architecture; the food is the stuff of legend. Haitian and African Creoles developed an exotic, spicy cuisine and were instrumental in creating jazz and Zydeco music.

Our street names are French and Spanish, our Creole architecture comes in a carnival of tropical colors, and our voodoo is a Caribbean import. The magic is irresistible.

A cultural gumbo, we celebrate our differences. In fact, we celebrate almost anything in the Big Easy. We have a saying: “Laissez les bons temps rouler,” with translates to “let the good times roll.” It’s a reminder of our French heritage, a way of life that started three centuries ago.

The city’s history began in 1718 when Sieur de Bienville founded a strategic port city five feet below sea level, near the juncture of the Mississippi River and the Gulf of Mexico. The city originally was confined to the area now known as the French Quarter or Vieux Carre (Old Square).

New Orleans remained under French jurisdiction until 1762, when King Louis XV ceded the large Louisiana Territory to his Spanish cousin, King Charles III. Spain returned Louisiana to France in 1800; three years later, Napoleon sold the territory to the U.S. in the Louisiana Purchase of 1803.

After the sale, Americans arrived en masse. Unwelcome in the Creole enclave of the French Quarter, they settled across Canal Street in what is known today as the Central Business District.

When Louisiana joined the Union, New Orleans became its first state capital. The cotton and tobacco trade made the port city the second wealthiest in the nation after New York. New Orleans also had strategic importance as the site of the last battle of the War of 1812—in 1815—when pirate Jean Lafitte joined U.S. troops, former Haitian slaves, and other soldiers to defeat the British.

The original New Orleans Creoles were thoroughbred French who were the first generation to be born in the colonies; the term distinguished such a person from an immigrant or an imported slave.

Under French, Spanish, and U.S. flags, Creole society coalesced as islanders, West Africans, slaves, free people of color, and indentured servants poured into the city along with a mix of French aristocrats, merchants, farmers, soldiers, and freed prisoners.

On the other hand, Cajuns are descended from a specific group of Catholic, French-speaking trappers and farmers who were exiled from Nova Scotia by the ruling English Protestants in 1755. About 10,000 eventually settled in southwest Louisiana, in what is now called Acadiana. Some later came to New Orleans.