New Orleans: a regent's name, silent bells and a canal never dug

New Orleans is a city everyone thinks they know — from its music, its Carnival and its balconies. This quiz takes you through its history in 20 questions with pictures.

Whose title does the city's name honor, and where was the man who chose its site born? What was the old square called before it took a general's name, where had the first nuns come from, and when did enslaved people gather to dance just outside the old town?

Why does the «French» Quarter look the way it does, and why did no alarm ring when the town burned one spring afternoon? For how long was the colony really French again before the Stars and Stripes went up, and what is so strange about the date of the famous battle of 1815? What do two letters in a baroness's iron railings mean?

Then the 19th and 20th centuries: what became of the waterway a broad street is named after, what do locals call the strip in its middle, and what first pulled the world's oldest streetcar line? Which poet named the first krewe, which visitor inspired the King of Carnival, where did a famous river race end, which painter visited his uncle's office — and why can we never hear the first star of jazz? The illustrations are old photographs, photochroms, engravings, lithographs, paintings and a map in the public domain.