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Step through an unassuming doorway from Cathedral Place and you enter the Lamy Garden. This small oasis is a remnant of the four acre garden established by Archbishop Jean Baptiste Lamy in the 1860's. Pass through the garden to the entrance to the Archdiocese of Santa Fe Museum, established in 1993. This museum is an outgrowth of the Archdiocese Office of Historic Patrimony and Archives and displays some of the history of the Catholic Church in Northern New Mexico.

The museum displays historic artifacts and religious artworks including painted altar screens (reredos), wooden statues...

Tuesday, January 15, 2008

On Old Santa Fe Trail, just around the corner from St. Francis Cathedral, stands the small Gothic church known as the Loretto Chapel. Home to the famous “miraculous staircase,” the chapel was built in the 1870s for the Sisters of Loretto, a Kentucky-based teaching order who were the first to respond to Bishop Jean-Baptiste’s plea (he wrote reported wrote hundreds of letters) for teachers to found schools in the wild west of Santa Fe. Imagine these nuns traveling by boat and covered wagon over the Santa Fe Trail, with the Bishop himself teaching them Spanish along the way. The dusty streets...

Tuesday, January 15, 2008
by Annie Lux • SantaFe.com

Is San Miguel Chapel really the oldest church in the United States? It’s hard to say for sure, of course, but if you accept its 1610 building date, it’s certainly in the running.

San Miguel Chapel was, in fact, built around that time, by a group of Tlexcalan Indians who came from Mexico with the first Spanish settlement party. They settled here, on the south bank of the Santa Fe River, in what is now known as Santa Fe’s oldest neighborhood, the Barrio de Analco. When the Spanish moved their own capital to Santa Fe in 1609, they worshipped at San Miguel until their own parish church was...

Tuesday, January 15, 2008
by Annie Lux • SantaFe.com