Loretto Chapel

The gothic chapel is modeled on St Chapelle in Paris, and was built between 1873 and 1878 for the Sisters of Loretto, the first nuns to come to New Mexico. St Chapelle has a circular stone staircase, but when the Loretto Chapel was being constructed, no local stonemasons were skilled enough to build one and the young architect didn’t know how to build one of wood. The nuns prayed for help and a mysterious traveling carpenter, whom the nuns believed afterward to be St Joseph, arrived. He built what is known as the Miraculous Staircase, a wooden spiral staircase with two complete 360-degree turns and no central or visible support. He left without charging for his labors and his identity remains unknown.