Congo Square, Historic square in Tremé, New Orleans, US.

Congo Square is an open plaza in the Tremé neighborhood, set within Louis Armstrong Park in the northern part of the city. The space consists of paved ground with a raised stage on one side and shaded trees spreading around the central area.

Enslaved Africans gathered on this ground, then outside the city walls, during the French and Spanish colonial era; an 1817 city ordinance confined their Sunday meetings to this one spot. The weekly market, drumming and dancing drew hundreds of participants and onlookers, and the gatherings faded in the decade before the Civil War.

The name comes from the Bakongo slaves brought to colonial Louisiana, and the square was also called Place des Nègres and Place Publique. On Sunday afternoons crowds watched the Bamboula, Calinda, Congo, Carabine and Juba dances, accompanied by drums, gourds, banjo-like instruments and reed quills. Marie Laveau led voodoo dances here in the 1830s.

Congo Square sits inside Louis Armstrong Park, across Rampart Street from the French Quarter, in the Tremé neighborhood. Enter from Rampart Street and walk north into the park; the square is an open paved area with trees and a stage. The red historical marker stands near the entrance, and the low stone monument with the "CONGO SQUARE / PLACE de NEGRES" plaque is set among shrubs beside a large tree.

Local ordinances from the early 19th century designated this as the only place in the city where enslaved people could gather on Sundays. This concentration allowed continuous transmission of dances, songs, and craft techniques that would have been suppressed elsewhere.