Tulane's main campus is on St. Charles Avenue in Uptown New Orleans, just across from Audubon Park, and extends north to South Claiborne Avenue via Freret and Willow Street. The campus is often regarded as the Uptown or St. Charles campus by locals. It was founded in the 1890s and covers an area of more than 110 acres (0.45 km2). Since 1978, it has been on the National Register of Historic Places. The Tulane University's Health Sciences campus comprises 18 mid/high-rise buildings located between the Mercedes-Benz Superdome and Canal Street in the downtown New Orleans Central Business District, which house the School of Medicine, the School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine, and the Tulane Medical Center's main campus. The Health Sciences campus serves as a hub for biomedical research as well as medical and public health education. Students and teachers from the Health Sciences campus also participate in community-wide health promotion activities like as community health fairs and condom distribution to combat New Orleans' high STI prevalence. The Tulane School of Social Work moved from its Uptown site to the Health Sciences campus in 2014, with facilities in a rebuilt building.

There are around 12000 students in the university.