Hotel Peter and Paul

The grandest room in the convent at Hotel Peter and Paul is the Mother Superior, with a king bed and a soaking tub, and the hotel promises that she does not judge. The rest of the parish, formed in Faubourg Marigny in 1848, has found other work. Its convent, schoolhouse and rectory hold 71 rooms between them, and the church has gone over to concerts and morning yoga. The restoration knew what to leave alone: paint still lifts from the wooden doors and the stairs creak. The colours were taken from religious paintings and tapestries of the fourteenth to the eighteenth centuries, which is how the Rector's Repose came to be Venetian red, with a limestone bath under an antique chandelier. In the convent the bedposts are topped with small crosses, in case anyone forgets where they are sleeping.

Recommended for anyone who has come to New Orleans for the music and would rather walk home from it, and for families, since children of every age are welcome. Frenchmen Street's clubs are five minutes away on foot, the French Quarter fifteen. The Elysian Bar, in the rectory, argues for not going out at all: it is run with Bacchanal Wine Bar, serves all day and has live music every night. The Marigny Lido, the heated pool in the grounds, has a bar of its own in season, for cocktails and something light. Cots are free and babysitting can be arranged. In the schoolhouse the Two of Queens sleeps four, and the hotel suggests it for pyjama parties and ghost stories, which in an old parish school should not run short of material.