Bataan Memorial Military Museum and Library
1050 Old Pecos Trail
474-1670
Tues.-Sat. 7:30-3:30
No admission charge
The museum was organized through the efforts of the New Mexico National Guard and displays artifacts collected by the state's military veterans. It honors all New Mexicans who have done military service. It occupies an old armory and displays items from World War I through Desert Storm. The highlight is a tribute to the Bataan veterans, the 200th Coast Artillery Regiment that was sent to the Philippines to furnish anti aircraft support. The regiment was later divided to form the 515th Coast Artillery Regiment. The regiment saw action on Bataan when the Japanese occupied the Philippines in 1942. The 200th is credited with firing the first shot and being the last to surrender to the Armies of Japan. Over half of the regiment was killed in the Pacific or imprisoned. A perpetual flame burns in their memory outside the state government building named in their honor.
The museum has 30,000 artifacts, an extensive research library and an archive of military documents relating to New Mexico's history.
Cathedral of St. Francis of Assisi
213 Cathedral Place
982-5619
Daily 6am-5:45pm mass is celebrated daily.
Constructed from New Mexico golden brown sandstone, St. Francis was the first church between Durango, Mexico and St. Louis to be designated a cathedral. Archbishop Jean Lamy supervised its construction. He died before its completion and is buried under the church's altar. Building began in 1869 and the exterior was completed in 1884. Work continued for many years after that. Bishop Lamy had recruited artisans from Europe to build and decorate the cathedral. It features Romanesque style stained glass imported from Clermont, France and dual bell towers. Corinthian columns lead to a ribbed vaulted ceiling. Frosted glass chandeliers light the sanctuary. The windows depict the twelve apostles. In later years stations of the cross painted in the New Mexican folk art (santero) style were hung on the wall beneath the European style windows. In a small chapel is a religious icon revered by local worshipers: it is a small wooden statue of the Virgin Mary who was known many years ago as La Conquistadora (The Conquerer) and is now called Nuestra Se?ora de la Paz, (Our Lady of Peace). It is the oldest representation of the Madonna in the United States. it has been carried to safety in and out of Santa Fe over the past 400 + years whenever there was war or an uprising of any kind. The massive bronze doors of the cathedral have etchings that depict more than 4 centuries of the history of the Roman Catholic religion in New Mexico. Each panel weighs 25 pounds.
Cristo Rey Church
1120 Canyon Road
983-8528
Daily 7am-7pm
Admission is free.
The parish of Cristo Rey uses this church, in America's largest adobe building, for regular worship, but visitors are welcome. Cristo Rey was built of 200,000 adobe bricks made from soil on the church's site. It was built in 1940 during the 400th anniversary of the arrival of Coronado in the southwest. There is a sculpted Spanish colonial style altar screen decorated with images of the saints that was crafted in 1760.
El Rancho de las Golondrinas
334 Los Pinos Road la Cienega
471-2261
Admission also varies by event.
take I25 to exit 246 and bear right on new Mexico Highway 599. Turn left at the first intersection on the frontage road and right just before the race track on Los Pinos Road. the museum is 3 miles from the intersection.
Note: The museum's self-guided tour involves about a 1.5-mile walk over roads and trails that are sometimes steep and rocky. Allow at least an hour and a half for the tour.
The ranch was the last stop before Santa Fe between Mexico City and the northern province of New Spain. As such, it was an oasis in an arduous journey. Centuries later, the natural beauty remains. Approximately 15 miles southwest of Santa Fe, El Rancho de las Golondrinas, "the ranch of the swallows," offers a vivid re-creation of the area's 18th and 19thcentury history. The restored buildings, built on original foundations, have been furnished as appropriate to the period. You can visit an 18th-century placita house, a home built around a patio with thick walls and defensive towers. You can see a water-powered mill, feel the heat in a blacksmith shop, visit a school house, hike through the mountain village and notice the solemnity in the morada, a chapel/meeting house used by an influential religious society. Festivals and special Civil War weekend demonstrations are popular with locals and visitors.. During these lively events, volunteers dress in traditional costumes, chat with visitors and demonstrate many of the skills early settlers needed to survive on the frontier. The museum comes alive with dancing, music, sales of food and crafts and activities of all sorts. You can see, taste, smell, hear and touch the life of Spanish Colonial and Territorial New Mexico. El Rancho de las Golondrinas also presents theme weekends throughout the summer, focusing on topics such as arts, oral history and storytelling, Colonial traditions, the Catholic faith as it shaped the area's arts and the animals the Spanish brought with them.
El Zaguan
545 Canyon Rd. o 983-2567
(Historic Santa Fe Foundation)
8 - noon Mon - Fri. Visitors are welcome.
This long, rambling Territorial style house has long been regarded as one of New Mexico's showplaces. The old hacienda with its lovely garden was named El Zaguan, "the passageway," because of the long hall running from the patio to the garden. James Johnson, one of the first Yankee merchants to settle permanently in Santa Fe, purchased the property, which included a small house, in 1849. In the Santa Fe pattern, the building was enlarged and remodeled several times. The house, today with 14 rooms, once had 24 rooms, including a chapel, a "chocolate room," and a library that once housed the largest collection of books in the territory. Servants' quarters were across the street.
In 1962 the property was purchased for preservation by El Zaguan Inc., and today one of its apartments is an office shared by the Historic Santa Fe Foundation and the Old Santa Fe Association.
Georgia O'Keeffe Museum
217 Johnson St.
995-0785
The Georgia O'Keeffe Museum is America's first museum dedicated to the work of a woman artist of international stature. O'Keeffe visited New Mexico in 1917 and moved there permanently in 1949, settling in an old adobe home in the small village of Abiquiu She lived there, inspired by the landscape and the light, for nearly 40 years before moving to Santa Fe a few years before her death in 1986 at age 98.
The Georgia O'Keeffe Museum houses the world's largest permanent collection of her work, including many pieces the artist kept for herself that have never exhibited previously. The museum displays drawings, paintings, pastels, sculptures and watercolors that O'Keeffe produced between 1916 and 1980. Flowers and bleached desert bones, abstractions, nudes, landscapes, city scapes and still lifes were all subjects of interest to her. The museum's galleries trace O'Keeffe's artistic evolution in a wide range of media and follow the depth and breadth of her long, productive career. As a secondary goal, the museum collects works by contemporaries of O'Keeffe who were part of her artistic community. Anne and John Marion, philanthropists who funded the new visual arts center at the College of Santa Fe, endowed the 13,000-square foot museum. The display throughout the museum's 10 galleries is simple and unpretentious, just as O'Keeffe would have liked. The museum offers guided tours, educational programming and special eventsI also features a short video about O'Keeffe's life and her contribution to American art.
A Home to Artists
Since the turn of the century, Santa Fe has been a refuge for painters, sculptors, writers, musicians and crafts people of national and international caliber. Writers including Mary Austin, Willa Cather, Jack London, H.L. Mencken, Ezra Pound, Witter Bynner and Winfield Townley Scott either lived year round in Santa Fe or were frequent visitors. Painters Edward Hopper and Marsden Hartley lived in Santa Fe in the 1920's and 1930's, and the town was also home base for such well-known artists as Robert Henri, John Sloan, Andrew Dasburg, George Bellows and Randall Davey. Composer Aaron Copland lived in Santa Fe in 1928, and Igor Stravinsky summered in Santa Fe for more than a decade, working frequently with the Santa Fe Opera.
Archdiocese of Santa Fe Museum
223 Cathedral Place
983-3811
9-4:30 Mon-Sat
Donations accepted. Admission free.
A small but impressive museum featuring historical documents, photographs, and artifacts that trace the development and role of the Catholic Church in New Mexico.
Cross of the Martyrs
Paseo de Peralta at Otero Street
no telephone and no regular hours of operation
Admission free.
Informative plaques line the walkway to the memorial, summarizing the early history of the city and the events that led to the death of the Franciscan missionaries who are memorialized by the 20 foot metal cross at the path's end. Institute of American Indian Arts Museum
108 Cathedral Pl.
988-6281
10- 5 Mon - Sat and noon - 5 Sunday.
Admission charged.
The museum is affiliated with the Institute of American Indian Arts, which has long been one of America's leading schools in this field. Among the teachers and students whose work has put the IAIA on the national map are Allan Houser, Fritz Scholder, Linda Lomahaftewa and T.C. Cannon. With more than 6,500 pieces in the collection representing 3,000 artists, the museum is the largest repository of contemporary Indian art in the world. Painting and sculpture, traditional crafts such as beadwork, pottery, weaving and basketry are displayed in the museum's five galleries. The museum offers educational programming and the outdoor Allan Houser Art Park for large sculpture.
Lamy Building
491 Old Santa Fe Tr. o 827-7336
(State of New Mexico Santa Fe Welcome Center)
The visitors center is open from 8 - to 5 daily
Named after Archbishop Jean Lamy, the building was erected in 1878 as part of St. Michael's College, the oldest private school in New Mexico. The three-story structure had classrooms and community rooms on the first two floors and a dormitory for the boys who came from throughout northern New Mexico on the third floor. With its tower, portico, galleries, veranda and mansard roof, the building is typical of many 19th-century New Mexico buildings. The Lamy Building's two-story portal is one of the few remaining in Santa Fe.
Loretto Chapel
207 Old Santa Fe Tr.
984-7971
9 - 6 daily and 10:30- 5 Sunday.
Admission charged; children under 6 free
Built for the Sisters of Loretto, the architectural style of this chapel testifies to the influence of Santa Fe's first bishop, Frenchman Jean Baptiste Lamy. The Sisters came to Santa Fe at the request of Lamy to establish a school for young women downtown. The French influence includes the white altar, beautifully adorned sanctuary, rose windows and architectural beauty modeled after Paris' Sainte Chapelle. The chapel's claim to fame, however, is a graceful spiral staircase that winds to the choir loft with no center support and not a single nail. Legend has it that work on the chapel was nearly done when the sisters realized no room remained for a traditional staircase. They prayed to St. Joseph for guidance, and believed he answered their novena when a carpenter arrived. He agreed to build the staircase. Using only a saw, a carpenter's square and tubs of hot water to soften and shape the wood, he crafted a beautiful circular staircase. He then disappeared before he could be paid.
The Museum of New Mexico
Administrative offices, 113 Lincoln Ave.
827-6451
The four museums operated by the Museum of New Mexico: Palace of the Governors, Museum of Fine Arts, Museum of International Folk Art, Museum of Indian Arts and Culture/Laboratory of Anthropology, and the privately funded Georgia O'Keeffe Museum follow the same pricing schedule and hours.
From 5 - 8 on Fridays all patrons receive free admission at The Georgia O'Keeffe Museum, The Museum of Fine Arts and The Palace of the Governors. Annual passes are available.
All branches of the Museum of New Mexico and the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum are open from 10- 5 Tues. - Sun. The Museum of Fine Arts, Palace of the Governors and The Georgia O'Keeffe Museum are also open from 5 - 8 on Fridays. The museums are closed Mondays, New Year's Day, Easter, Thanksgiving and Christmas. For information about the Museum of New Mexico's events and attractions call the 24-hour information line, 827-6463.
Museum of Fine Arts
107 W. Palace Ave.
827-4468
The state's oldest art museum features more than 20,000 works of art from the Southwest.The museum is a beautiful example of the Pueblo Revival style of construction, complete with split cedar latillas (roof supports), hand hewn vigas (log roof beams) and corbels. The gracious style reflected in the thick walls, pleasantly landscaped central courtyard, smooth interior plaster and other finishing touches became synonymous with "Santa Fe Style."
The Museum of Fine Arts offers art classes for children, an extensive program of lectures and gallery talks. The Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival makes its home in the museum's St. Francis Auditorium during the summer.
Museum of Indian Arts & Culture/Laboratory of Anthropology
710 Camino Lejo
827-6344
Presenting the diverse stories that illuminate the art and history of Native America through two millennia. Housed in a large new wing, the exhibit "Here, Now and Always" tells the story of the Native American presence in the Southwest with more than 1,300 objects and a multimedia production created during the eight-year period the museum spent in collaboration with Native American elders, artists, scholars, teachers, builders and writers. These consultants worked with a team of Indian and non-Indian museum curators and designers to develop an exhibit that combines the actual voices of contemporary American Indians with ancient artifacts. The architectural design helps bring centuries of culture and tradition to life
The exhibit uses stone and silver, clay and wool, feast days, fairs and family stories to tell of the enduring communities of the Southwest. To orient visitors, it incorporates the landscape itself, mesas and settlements, plazas and sacred peaks. Visitors proceed by theme through the galleries. You can visit a pueblo kitchen, an Apache wickiup, a Navajo hogan, a 1930s trading post and a contemporary vendor's booth at a tribal feast day celebration. The stories in "Here, Now and Always" are told on video tape by 24 American Indians.
The Museum of Indian Arts and Culture was established in 1987 next to its adjoining research facility, the Laboratory of Anthropology. In addition to exhibits, the museum has a resource center with looms, magazines, books, maps and other useful tools. The museum is noted for its prehistoric and historic pottery, basketry, woven fabrics and jewelry.
Museum of International Folk Art
706 Camino Lejo
827-6350
Just as the Museum of Indian Arts and Culture provides a fascinating and informative orientation to the American Indian cultures of the Southwest, the Folk Art Museum does the same for New Mexico's Hispanic culture. The Hispanic Heritage Wing features Spanish Colonial folk art and an interactive computer program in its "Familia y Fe/Family and Faith" exhibit. The finely crafted displays delineate the central position of extended family relationships and the Catholic faith in northern New Mexico's Hispanic culture. The exhibit also underlines the resourcefulness of the pioneer families who lived for more than a century in tremendous isolation from manufactured goods, European medicine and formal education.
This museum holds the world's largest collection of international folk art. In the "Multiple Visions: A Common Bond" exhibit, for example, you'll find objects from more than 100 countries displayed in fascinating dioramas. Toys from 19th-century Europe, Chinese prints, embroidered Indian mandalas, Mexican Day of the Dead mementos and examples of early 20th-century Americana are among the treasures. This exhibit alone displays more than 10,000 pieces of folk art, all donated by the Girard Foundation Collection.
National Park Service Southwest Office
1100 Old Santa Fe Tr.
988-6100
8 - 4:30 Mon - Fri
brochure available in the lobby for a self guided tour
This attractive building, a National Historic Landmark, is the largest known adobe, or mud brick, office building and one of the largest secular adobe buildings in the United States. The sculptural, massive quality of the adobe walls, the lovely patios and the hand-worked wooden beams and corbels reflect some of the characteristic elements of "Santa Fe Style," a type of architecture that began locally around 1910 and continues to be popular today. During the Great Depression of the 1930's the Public Works Administration provided the materials and skilled labor, and the Civilian Conservation Corps provided unskilled workers ( a crew of unmarried men ages 17 to 23). They earned about $1 a day for their work and had to send home at least $22 a month. The men made the structure's 280,000 adobe bricks by hand. >From the artisans they worked with they learned woodwork, stone and foundation masonry and traditional tinwork as they decorated and enhanced the building. The government completed the job by acquiring paintings by local artists, Navajo rugs and Pueblo pottery. That collection remains on display.
New Mexico State Capitol
Paseo Peralta at Old Santa Fe Tr.
986-4589
free guided tours at 10 and 2 Mon. -Fri.
The Capitol building is open 8 - 5 Mon - Fri.
The Capitol, nicknamed the Roundhouse for its circular shape, was built in 1966 and remodeled at a cost of $34 million in 1992. The architectural design comes from the Zia Pueblo sun sign or circle of life, the same symbol that is on New Mexico's red and yellow state flag.. The Capitol has four levels, three above ground. In the basement (which is not open to the public) are the House and Senate chambers. The second floor, at ground level, contains a visitor information office and the rotunda where visitors find changing art exhibits. The floor of the rotunda displays the state seal. All the semiprecious stones decorating the seal and the marble of the surrounding walls and floor were mined in New Mexico. Old photographs of past legislators line the walls of the third floor House and Senate galleries, the area where visitors may watch laws being made. On the fourth floor, the Governor's Gallery features art by New Mexicans in exhibits that rotate often. Walls elsewhere in the building display paintings, photographs, weaving and mixed media work by some of New Mexico's best known artists.
Palace of the Governors
105 West Palace Avenue on the Plaza
476-5100
10 - 5 Tue - Sun
Free Friday Evenings 5 - 8 pm
Built in 1610, the state history museum was the birthplace of the Museum of New Mexico in 1909. Recognized as the centerpiece of Santa Fe, The Palace chronicles the history of the city, as well as New Mexico, the desert Southwest and the Americas with exhibits that reflect Spanish colonial, Mexican and Territorial period lifestyles.
The Planetarium
Santa Fe Community College, 6401 Richards Ave.
438-1777, 438-1677
Admission charged.
Tickets go on sale a half-hour before showtime.
The Planetarium, one of the city's newer, out-of-the-way attractions, offers a changing schedule of productions intended to give the audience a better feeling for the night sky. The Celestial Highlights program the first Thursday of each month provides an introduction to the stars and constellations that will be visible for the next 30 days. Showtime is 7 PM. The planetarium, on the upper level in the west wing of the Community College, also offers family programs each Saturday at 10:30 AM and a different program on Fridays, usually with showings at 6:30 and 8 PM. Recent productions included Sesame Street characters and a report on the findings of the Magellan spacecraft.
Santa Fe Farmers' Market
Sanbusco Market Center Parking Lot, 500 Montezuma St.
983-4098
The market is open from 7:30 to 11am on Tues and Sat and from 9:30 - 1:30 on Sunday. Those who come early find the best selection. The market usually runs from mid-May until sometime in October depending on the weather. Potential buyers and their children are admitted free. Farmers' Market brings fresh area produce along with homemade salsa, baked goods, herbal remedies, cheeses, organic meat, fragrant cut flowers, plants for landscaping and more. The vendors come from throughout northern New Mexico and as far east as Ft. Sumner, nearly 200 miles away. When you buy here, you not only get delicious food, you're supporting small business. Music, free samples, coffee and baked goods for sale mark most morning markets.
Randall Davey Audubon Center
1800 Upper Canyon Rd.
983-4609
To reach the center, follow Canyon Road past the intersection of Camino Cabra at Cristo Rey Church to Upper Canyon Road. The center is the very last structure on Canyon Road 9 -5 PM daily. trail fee is $1 for nonmembers.
In 1847, at the beginning of the U.S. occupation, the first sawmill in the territory was built here, providing planks for the construction of Santa Fe's Fort Marcy, where U.S. troops were garrisoned. At the turn of the century, Candelario Martinez farmed this land until he sold the property to artist Randall Davey in 1920. Davey converted the mill into a two-story home and used the Martinez hacienda for his studio. The house still contains a representative sample of Davey's work and his furnishings. The Audubon Society acquired this property in the mid-1980s and operates it as a nature center and the group's New Mexico headquarters. Included is land along the Santa Fe River. The center's trails begin in the pi?on and juniper woodlands and meadows and climb up to cool ponderosa pine forest. More than 100 species of birds have been observed here, along with coyote, black bear, mountain lion and mule deer. In addition to the do-it-yourself nature trails, the center offers guided hikes, wildlife interpretive programs and summer activities for children. The center's gift shop sells bird seed, books and other items of interest to naturalists.
St. Catherine Indian School
801 Griffin St.
982-6258
Call to arrange a free tour.
Founded in 1887, St. Catherine Indian School is the oldest Native American boarding high school in New Mexico. More than 25 different American Indian cultures have been represented here including Navajo, Apache, Hopi, Zuni, all the Pueblo Indians of New Mexico and other tribes of the Southwest. The Pueblo-style chapel contains traditional Native American prayer symbols. Murals throughout the campus celebrate American Indian spirituality. The mural of Our Lady of Guadalupe, for example, details 10 major events in the Americas, blending mainstream, religious and American Indian historic figures into the design. In the Historical Room there are vintage photos from the late 1800s. The campus also has a gift shop and a gallery that displays traditional American Indian pottery, jewelry, weaving and painting, including student work. All proceeds from sales benefit the school
San Miguel Mission
401 Old Santa Fe Tr
983-3974
Mon - Sat 9 - 4:30 Sun 1:30 - 4:30.
Admission is free. Mass is celebrated Sundays at 5 pm.
Many people believe this mission is the oldest church in the United States. Construction began in 1610 by the Tlaxcalan Indians who came from Mexico as servants of the Spanish soldiers and missionaries. The job was completed in 1625. When the Pueblo Indians drove the Spanish from New Mexico in 1680, they burned all records of its early history and nearly destroyed the mission. The sturdy adobe walls remained unharmed, however. When the Spanish returned, they ordered the church rebuilt and construction was finished in 1710. For many years it served the surrounding Barrio Analco, one of Santa Fe's historic neighborhoods.
Inside you can see traditional religious images crafted by Hispanic artists. The wooden reredos, or altar screen, dates to 1798 and holds paintings from the early 18th century. Depicted are rare and ancient images of Jesus on buffalo and deer hides, testimony to the faith and ingenuity of frontier artists. There is also the San Jose bell, cast of silver, copper, iron and gold. Considered the oldest bell in America, some historians date it to 1356. Spanish churches used it before it was shipped to Mexico and then taken to Santa Fe by oxcart in the 19th century.
Santa Fe Botanical Garden
Santa Fe Community College, 6401 Richards Ave.
438-1684
Open during daylight hours
No admission charge.
Santa Fe Community College has leased 25 acres of land to gardeners who plan to develop a place for research and education as well as natural beauty. The four Geobotany Beds near the school's main entrance offer a glimpse at the creative use of native plants and drought tolerant horticulture.
Santa Fe Southern Railway
410 S. Guadalupe St.
989-8600
Trains depart for the four-and-a-half-hour ride at 10:30 am Thursday and Saturday every week of the year, with additional Tuesday trips March through April and Tuesday and Sunday trips April through October. From May through October the train offers Sunset/Starlight rides on Friday evenings with departure one hour before sunset; call for specific times. Call for fares.
Santuario de Guadalupe
100 Guadalupe St.
988-2027
Mon- Sat 9 - 4. closed weekends from November through April
Admission is free. Mass is celebrated once a month.
This is the oldest shrine to Our Lady of Guadalupe in the United States. Our Lady of Guadalupe is a name given by the Catholic Church to the apparition of the Virgin to an indigenous man outside of Mexico City in the 16th century.
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