The Poe Death Exhibit is a dark re-creation of the day Edgar Allan Poe was laid to rest. In this immersive exhibit, Poe’s body and casket lie in state as you explore the questions that still haunt his final hours. Follow the competing theories, examine how the clothes he wore offer unsettling clues, and pause at a candlelit vigil for the master of horror and mystery.
Then enter The Raven Room. A 20-foot mural by Michael Kirby of Murals of Baltimore brings Poe’s “ominous bird of yore” into the present, blending classic and contemporary style. Encircling the space are 26 sequential illustrations of Poe’s “The Raven” by French artist Gustave Doré, completed just months before Doré’s death, tracing Poe’s most iconic poem in haunting detail.
On view during regular museum hours, included with admission to Carroll Mansion. Hours vary seasonally, so please check the venue listing for today’s open days and times.
April 20, 2026
@
6:30 pm
–
September 13, 2027
@
2:00 pm EST
Baltimore, October 1849. Edgar Allan Poe is discovered alone, clad in filthy rags, confused and gravely ill, with no clear account of how he came to be there. Within days, he is dead. The master of mystery leaves behind a final story no one can fully explain. As we travel through Baltimore, you’ll stand in the places tied to his last days and explore the line between documented fact and enduring legend.
Explore the enduring mystery surrounding Poe’s tragic end on a special Bus Tour of Edgar Allan Poe’s Life and Death in Baltimore. Bus Tours are offered every month, April Thru October. Additional tour option includes prix-fixe luncheon at Baltimore’s original Annabel Lee Tavern (May thru Sept only.)
Tours include stops at important Poe Places around Baltimore, including:
Pickup at the Baltimore Visitor Center, 401 Light Street in Inner Harbor
The Hospital where Poe died
Westminster Hall & Burying Ground including two Poe graves
The Poe Statue
Tour of The Edgar Allan Poe House & Museum
Return to Vistor Center
Please note that Poe House is an historic site and not ADA accessible (there is no elevator or ramp to the second floor.)
Tours leave from the Baltimore Visitor Center; check dates for available tour times. Meet your guide 10-minutes before your tour time inside the Baltimore Visitor Center at the gift shop register; refunds will not be granted to late arrivals.
Dates are limited: 3rd Saturday each month, April – September. For October dates see our festival schedule (released July 1)
BOOK YOUR TOUR (You will be taken to our Peek Ticketing System)
As part of the Poe Beyond Baltimore series, Poe Baltimore presents a guest lecture at the Robert Burns Birthplace Museum. Visiting from the United States, Enrica Jang, Executive Director of the Edgar Allan Poe House & Museum, explores Edgar Allan Poe’s early life, Scottish connections, and the transatlantic forces that shaped his work.
Orphaned at the age of two, Poe was taken in by John and Frances Allan of Richmond, Virginia. Their household was shaped as much by commerce and ambition as by culture. John Allan, a Scottish-born merchant, provided Poe with education and opportunity, but the relationship between guardian and child would ultimately fracture. The resulting tension between sensitivity and pragmatism, art and industry, and belonging and exile left a lasting mark on Poe’s life and writing.
Presented in collaboration with POEtic Justice Productions, the lecture places Poe’s upbringing within its original Scottish context, tracing the Allan family’s roots and the broader nineteenth-century world of migration, commerce, and cultural exchange. Like Robert Burns, Poe emerged from uncertain circumstances and wrote with emotional intensity and fierce independence, transforming personal hardship into a lasting literary legacy.
This illustrated lecture is free and open to the public and does not require admission to the Burns Birthplace Museum, though attendees are encouraged to support the museum through a donation or tour if able. The program includes discussion and audience Q&A.
The following day, the series continues in Irvine with a separate, ticketed cemetery walk and performance. Led by Enrica Jang and actor Stephen Duffy, the event invites participants to visit the places discussed in the lecture, offering a chance to experience Poe’s Scottish connections on the ground rather than only in theory. Details for the Irvine event are available here.
As part of the Poe Beyond Baltimore series, a guest lecture at the Charles Dickens Museum in London, England. Visiting from the United States, Enrica Jang, Director of the Edgar Allan Poe House & Museum, presents a talk exploring the brief but intriguing relationship between Charles Dickens and Edgar Allan Poe.
In 1842, Poe sought out Dickens during the novelist’s American tour, hoping for conversation, connection, and perhaps professional support. Though their direct contact was short-lived, it would echo through the rest of Poe’s career. Drawing on surviving correspondence, sharp literary exchanges, and shared frustrations over international copyright, the lecture traces a transatlantic dialogue shaped by admiration, ambition, and creative rivalry.
Jang also examines Poe’s famously perceptive critique of Dickens’s serialized fiction, the possible influence of Dickens’s pet raven, Grip, on Poe’s most iconic poem, and Dickens’s quiet decision to assist Poe’s surviving family years after his death. While Poe’s admiration for Dickens is well documented, Dickens’s view of Poe remains uncertain, leaving behind a literary connection with a wisp of mystery.
After museum close, continue the conversation with Enrica and actor, Stephen Smith, at Poe & a Pint, a ticketed evening discussion and performance devoted to Edgar Allan Poe, held at a nearby pub within walking distance of the museum in Bloomsbury. Details for the evening event are available here.
Call for entries for the 2026 Saturday ‘Visiter’ Awards opens January 19, 2026, Edgar Allan Poe’s birthday! Honoring a new generation of creators and artists inspired by Edgar Allan Poe.
Deadline for entry May 30, 2026. Visit the awards website for more information and guidelines for entry: SaturdayVisiterAwards.org
It feels INSANE to say we are fewer than 60 days away from the 2024 International Edgar Allan Poe Festival & Awards. This year is particularly special as we roll out the crimson carpet for The Edgar Allan Poe House & Museum’s 75th Anniversary coinciding with the 175th anniversary of Poe’s death in Baltimore.
Programming for this FREE community event does not happen without support from our sponsors. For a second year, Wells Fargo Foundation has committed $100,000 to grow festival programming and to celebrate Poe’s legacy here in Baltimore and beyond. They join La Cite Development, RavenBeer, Maryland Public Television, Hippodrome Foundation, Poe’s Magic Theatre and over 40 organizations contributing funds and programming for this event. All proceeds benefit The Edgar Allan Poe House & Museum. Poe Baltimore will share plans for expansion of the museum with attendees at our Diamond Anniversary events this October.
Read this month’s newsletter for updates on festival and museum program announcements including The Poe Museum (Richmond), the NSA’s National Cryptologic Museum, and year two of the Costume POErade. And congratulations to all of the Official Nominees for the 2024 Saturday ‘Visiter’ Awards, presented by Poe Baltimore, recognizing a new generation of artists and writers inspired by the life and works of Edgar Allan Poe. Winners will be announced festival weekend at The Black Cat Ball, the official party of Poe Fest International.
Yours in Poe, Enrica Jang Director, Poe Baltimore
P.S. Our year-long commemoration of the 75th Anniversary of the Poe House & Museum in Baltimore continues. Each month we’re sharing facts, points of interest, and hidden history of Poe House, from its savior from demolition in 1940, to the future of the museum as we look ahead to transformation and expansion. This month, meet the first tour guides at Poe House!
Excerpts from our July session of the Virginia Poe Bicentennial Discussion Series. The strange after-lives of Edgar & Virginia Poe, plus rites and traditional feminine in 19th century America. If you enjoy this presentation, look for more sessions in this year’s poetical series from Poe Baltimore.
Overview: Enrica Jang, Director of The Edgar Allan Poe House & Museum in Baltimore, provides an overview of the strange afterlives of Virginia Clemm to her cousin, Edgar Allan Poe.
Act I: Fascinating Women Buried in Baltimore
Kathy Santora and Kalin Thomas look at the lives of women buried in Westminster Burying Ground as well as in Green Mount, Loudon Park, Mt. Auburn, and New Cathedral cemeteries, and how these individuals shaped the city today.
Act II: The Art of Mourning
Hayden Peters of ArtOfMourning.com discusses mourning customs in Virginia Poe’s day. The cost of fashionable mourning was almost as high as the loss of a loved one and the requirements of mourning costume and jewels led families into debt. Learn how these customs became part of 19th century family behavior and how influential women led to its decline.
Act III: Mourning, A Perpetual State
The potential for mourning is endless, perhaps because, being human, we know our time is finite. Virginia Crawford shares how mourning spurs her to write, with poetry from her book, “Questions for Water,” and “The Conqueror Worm” by Edgar Allan Poe.
This is the seventh and final pre-recorded discussion in this series for the Virginia Poe Bicentennial. The Virginia Poe Bicentennial is presented by Poe Baltimore, Westminster Hall & Burying Ground, Maryland Women’s Heritage Center, the Poe Cottage at Fordham (Bronx, NYC,) with generous help and participation from Poe Studies Association, The Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore and The Poe Museum (Richmond.)
Excerpts from our June session of the Virginia Poe Bicentennial Discussion Series. The public scandals and private tragedies that shaped the marriage of Virginia & Edgar Allan Poe.
Overview: Enrica Jang, Director of The Edgar Allan Poe House & Museum in Baltimore, provides an overview of the marriage of Virginia Clemm to her cousin, Edgar Allan Poe.
Act I: Tender Hearts
Dean Knight from The Poe Museum in Richmond, Virginia, analyzes Poe’s anguished letter from Richmond to Baltimore, August 29, 1835, proposing marriage to his first cousin, Virginia Clemm.
Act II: Affairs of the Heart
Historical fiction writer and bestselling author, Lynn Cullen, shares her research on Poe’s affairs of the heart that hastened his wife’s death in 1847.
Act III: Virginia Poe and Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita
Poe and Nobokov scholar, Susan Elizabeth Sweeney, explores the connections between Virginia’s experience as a child bride and one of America’s most notorious novels.
This is the sixth in a pre-recorded discussion series for the Virginia Poe Bicentennial. The Virginia Poe Bicentennial is presented by Poe Baltimore, Westminster Hall & Burying Ground, Maryland Women’s Heritage Center, the Poe Cottage at Fordham (Bronx, NYC,) with generous help and participation from Poe Studies Association, The Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore and The Poe Museum (Richmond.)
Discussion with bestselling author, Lynn Cullen, who wrote the novel “Mrs. Poe” inspired by the rumored extra-marital affair between Edgar Allan Poe and the writer, Frances Osgood.
What did Virginia know? How did this affair of the heart (and perhaps more) impact her last days of marriage to Poe before her premature death in 1847? Preview of our penultimate session in the Virginia Poe Bicentennial Discussion Series, “MARRIAGE: Public Scandals & Private Tragedies of Mr. and Mrs. Poe”
The hidden her-stories of the women in the Poe family, including a Revolutionary War patriot, and how a mother’s love changed literary history.
Act I
The Life of Elizabeth Cairnes Poe, Matron & Patriot
J. Scott Watkins appears as David Poe Sr., Revolutionary War hero and patriot at the battle of North Point in the War of 1812, to talk about the family’s contribution to the founding of the United States, and the forgotten war service of his wife, Elizabeth.
Act II
Poetry reading: “To My Mother”
Storyteller and writer, Kalin Thomas, will read Edgar Alln Poe’s poetical tribute to the woman who became his surrogate mother in his later years.
Baltimore Mothers: Real and True Women
Antebellum women were expected to be pious, pure, submissive, and domestic. This ideal was not one that all women were able to achieve. Join Dr. Amy Rosenkrans for a talk on motherhood in Baltimore across race, religious, and social classes.
Act III
Viewing of items pertaining to Virginia Poe from the Special Collections Department at Enoch Pratt Free Library. Eben Dennis will talk about the Poe Collection’s array of manuscripts, photographs, and rare books.
This is the fifth in a series of monthly programs for the Virginia Poe Bicentennial; follow us on social media to be alerted when events are happening! The Virginia Poe Bicentennial is presented by Poe Baltimore, Westminster Hall & Burying Ground, Maryland Women’s Heritage Center, the Poe Cottage at Fordham (Bronx, NYC,) with generous help and participation from Poe Studies Association, The Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore and The Poe Museum (Richmond.)
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