Billing itself as the oldest house in the United States, this two-room adobe building is said to date – in a much altered form – from c 1646. While several pueblos in the Southwest are certainly much older than the Casa Vieja, it's worth a peek to get a glimpse of the living conditions of its early Mexican inhabitants.


Lonely Planet's must-see attractions

Nearby Santa Fe attractions

1. San Miguel Mission

0.02 MILES

Erected from 1610 onwards, by and for the Tlaxcalan Indians who arrived from Mexico with Santa Fe’s first Spanish colonists, this is considered to be the…

2. Loretto Chapel

0.13 MILES

Built in 1878 for the Sisters of Loretto, this tiny Gothic chapel is famous as the site of St Joseph's Miraculous Staircase, a spiraling and apparently…

3. State Capitol

0.15 MILES

New Mexico’s State Capitol, informally known as the Roundhouse, was laid out in the shape of the state symbol – also the emblem of Zia Pueblo – in 1966…

4. St Francis Cathedral

0.23 MILES

Santa Fe’s French-born bishop Jean-Baptiste Lamy – hero of Willa Cather's Death Comes for the Archbishop – set about building this cathedral in 1869. Its…

5. Museum of Contemporary Native Arts

0.24 MILES

Primarily showing work by the students and faculty of the esteemed Institute of American Indian Arts, this museum also has the finest contemporary…

6. The Plaza

0.26 MILES

For more than 400 years, the Plaza has stood at the heart of Santa Fe. Originally it marked the far northern end of the Camino Real from Mexico; later, it…

8. New Mexico Museum of Art

0.31 MILES

Built in 1917 and a prime early example of Santa Fe’s Pueblo Revival architecture, the New Mexico Museum of Art has spent a century collecting and…