Old Ursuline Convent, New Orleans, French colonial convent in French Quarter, New Orleans, United States.

The Old Ursuline Convent is a stucco-covered brick building in the French neoclassical style, completed by 1753 and set back from Chartres Street behind a gatehouse of about 1825–1830. Its plain walls have no pilasters or columns; slightly arched windows in shallow moldings, rusticated corner quoins and a narrow central pedimented pavilion break the rhythm, under a broad hipped roof with small low dormers. The ground floor held the orphanage dormitory, classrooms, refectory and infirmary, the upper floor the nuns' cells, library and storerooms.

The Ursulines arrived from Rouen in 1727 at Governor Étienne Perier's request; their first convent, built by Michael Zeringue, was finished in 1734 but deteriorated in the humid climate. In 1745 Ignace François Broutin designed a brick replacement, completed by 1753 under contractor Claude Joseph Villars Dubreuil. The nuns moved to Dauphine Street in 1824, and the building became the bishop's residence.

The convent was founded in 1727 by Ursuline nuns from Rouen, at the request of Governor Étienne Perier, to run a hospital and educate young girls. The sisters came from the Convent of Rouen in Normandy; Marie-Madeleine Hachard was among them. Catherine de Perier, the governor's wife, laid the first stone of the first building.

The convent sits in the French Quarter and welcomes visitors most days with guided tours that explain the building and its history. Wear comfortable shoes and allow time to slowly walk through the rooms and climb the original staircases.

The winding cypress staircase with its wrought-iron handrail in the ground-floor entry hall is believed to have been salvaged from the first convent of the 1730s. The building's front façade originally faced the Mississippi River; the Chartres Street entrance was at the back until a gatehouse of about 1825–1830 reversed the orientation.