The Carousel Bar & Lounge

Where it is

The Carousel Bar & Lounge is in the lobby of Hotel Monteleone, at 214 Royal Street in the French Quarter. The hotel’s page says the bar “started spinning in 1949 and hasn’t stopped since.”

The carousel

Biz New Orleans reports that the bar opened on Saturday, September 3, 1949. Punch says the circular bar top was built on the chassis of an antique merry-go-round. The hotel calls it the country’s “first and only revolving bar.”

It seats 25, according to Biz New Orleans and Wikipedia; the hotel’s own pages do not give a seat count. A full turn takes 15 minutes, and a 2012 New Orleans Magazine visit noted the patrons move counterclockwise. The hotel says a single motor turns “the two thousand rollers beneath the floor.” Biz New Orleans describes 14 steel casters instead, so the mechanism’s details vary by source. In 1992 a redesign added carvings of eight jester faces to the overhanging outer room, per the hotel.

The adjoining room was once the Swan Room, a nightclub where, in the 1950s and 1960s, performers such as Liberace and Louis Prima appeared (Wikipedia).

The Monteleone family

The hotel’s history begins with Antonio Monteleone, a Sicilian cobbler who bought the Hotel Victor at Iberville and Royal Streets in 1886. It became the Commercial Hotel in 1896 and the Hotel Monteleone in 1909, after a rebuild. Antonio’s son Frank took control in the 1920s, and his grandson William “Billy” Monteleone took over operations in 1958. Wikipedia adds that Antonio died in 1913, that Bill died in 2011, and that his son William Jr. took over. It dates the renaming to 1908 rather than 1909. The hotel says it remains family-owned.

The Vieux Carré

The Vieux Carré takes its name from the French term for the French Quarter. The hotel’s history credits bartender Walter Bergeron with creating it in 1938, and calls it the bar’s signature drink. Biz New Orleans calls Bergeron the head bartender. Maison Ferrand places him at the Swan Room, which became the Carousel Bar in 1949 according to current bar manager Marvin Allen. So the drink is older than the carousel.

Treat the date and name with some care. Every account here traces to the hotel or repeats it; no source here points to a 1938 document. Wikipedia’s page tags the Bergeron credit “citation needed.” One article, Embellish, says the drink first appeared in print in Stanley Clisby Arthur’s 1937 book, a year before the hotel’s date, and shrugs, “History is messy.” No source here quotes the book itself. Spirits Curated names the Swan Room in one place and the Carousel Bar in another. Punch says it was made as an alternative to the trademarked Sazerac. The drink’s own story is at Vieux Carré.

The writers

The hotel created its Literary Suites in 1990, honoring Eudora Welty, Truman Capote, Ernest Hemingway, Tennessee Williams, and William Faulkner, and says Anne Rice mentions the hotel in her work. In 1999, per the hotel, the American Library Association designated it a National Literary Landmark, “just one of three hotels in the country to hold this honor.” Wikipedia gives June 1999, names the Friends of the Library Association as the designator, and lists the Plaza and the Algonquin in New York as the other two.

Punch says Faulkner, Williams, and Capote each drank at the bar. Wikipedia notes that Williams’s The Rose Tattoo and Orpheus Descending and Welty’s A Curtain of Green refer to the hotel. It also says Capote’s claim, made on The Tonight Show, that he was born at the hotel is false: his mother stayed there while pregnant and gave birth at a hospital.

What to order

The Vieux Carré. Biz New Orleans listed the bar’s version in 2019 as Pierre Ferrand 1840 Cognac, Bénédictine, Sazerac Rye, sweet red vermouth, Angostura, and Peychaud’s Bitters. Recipes drift, so ask what is in the glass today. Charles’s own version is his Vieux Carré recipe. Punch recommends sitting at the revolving bar and notes the stools do not move up or down.

Before you go

As of November 2026, the hotel lists hours of 11 a.m. to midnight daily, with guests 21 and older only after 6 p.m. Live music runs seven nights a week, and the events calendar listed Tom Hook on November 9 and Lena Prima & Band on November 12. The Carousel Bar Experience, a private session with mixologist Marvin Allen, is $100 per person at 10 a.m. daily, booked through the hotel confirmation email. The bar’s page takes reservations, and the hotel’s number is 504.681.4444.