Mardi Gras

What actually happens

King cake — cinnamon dough with a plastic baby, from Twelfth Night to Ash Wednesday. Throws — beads, doubloons, MoonPies and painted coconuts from float riders.

• 01King cake — cinnamon dough with a plastic baby, from Twelfth Night to Ash Wednesday.
• 02Throws — beads, doubloons, MoonPies and painted coconuts from float riders.
• 03Mardi Gras Indians — Black masking traditions, suits beaded entirely by hand.
• 04Lundi Gras and Rex — the monarch's arrival on Fat Tuesday and the city going quiet.

Sound of the crowd

Brass bands are the spine. Rebirth, Hot 8 and the TBC Brass Band play second-line rhythms for hours without amplification; the parade bands mostly play recordings of 1980s funk from truck-mounted speakers.

How it survived

French settlers celebrated carnival from 1699. Spanish governors restricted masked processions in the eighteenth century; the Mistick Krewe of Comus revived them in 1857 with a torchlit parade and a themed ball, which set the modern template.