Start from 39 curated places around Baton Rouge, LA, then choose the recommendations that fit your guests.
Restaurants & cafés
Louisiana Lagniappe Restaurant
A long-standing south Baton Rouge seafood house consistently ranked among the city's top restaurants, with a menu built around fresh Gulf fish, stuffed specialties, and Louisiana-Creole preparations. Regulars return for the crab-stuffed bell peppers and chipotle-sauced black drum, and the kitchen handles serious volume without cutting corners on the sauces.
Parrain's Seafood
A Perkins Road institution opened in 2001 with a commitment to fresh Louisiana seafood in a warm, casual room. Known for chargrilled oysters, Gulf shrimp preparations, and a menu that stays faithful to the Gulf Coast pantry without overcomplicating it — the kind of place locals bring out-of-towners to show off what the state does.
Trails & outdoors
LSU University Lake Loop
A 4-mile paved loop around University Lake, the main recreational greenspace east of the LSU campus, mixing lakeside sidewalk with a dedicated multi-use path. Walkers, cyclists, and runners share the route, and steady water views across the lake toward the campus treeline run throughout. An optional extension around City Park Lake adds roughly 1.5 miles.
Mississippi River Levee Trail
A 12.5-mile paved, lighted path running along the levee from downtown Baton Rouge south past LSU toward the parish boundary, with separate lanes for cyclists and pedestrians and consistent river views from the elevated levee crest. One of the few places in the city with a direct, unobstructed sightline to the Mississippi.
Things to do
Shaw Center for the Arts
A 125,000-square-foot downtown arts complex housing the Manship Theatre, the LSU Museum of Art, gallery spaces, and a river terrace in a contemporary building with Mississippi River views. The anchor of Baton Rouge's downtown cultural revival, now in its second decade as the city's leading multi-use arts venue.
Manship Theatre
A 325-seat performing arts venue inside the Shaw Center, celebrating two decades of programming with an intimate atmosphere where every seat has a genuinely good sightline. The program spans dance, music, and theater with a mix of regional companies and touring acts at a scale that rewards close attention.
Landmarks & sights
Louisiana State Capitol
The tallest state capitol building in the country, a 34-floor Art Deco tower rising from formal gardens near the Mississippi, free to enter and open daily. The 27th-floor observation deck that normally offers a sweeping panorama over the river and downtown is closed for a multi-year renovation through 2027, but the ornate first-floor legislative chambers remain open to the public without a ticket.
Louisiana's Old State Capitol
A Gothic Revival castle from 1849 perched on the bluffs above the river, now a museum of Louisiana political history. The stained-glass dome in the central rotunda is the visual centerpiece, and the audio tour walks visitors through the state's most turbulent political moments in the building where they actually occurred.