Palace of the Governors

The Palace of the Governors anchors the north side of the Santa Fe Plaza and stands as the oldest continuously occupied public building in the United States. Construction began around 1610 under the direction of Spanish governor Pedro de Peralta, who established Santa Fe as the capital of the newly organized Province of New Mexico. The original complex was a fortified casa real built of adobe and timbers harvested from the surrounding mountains, sized to house the governor, his garrison, chapel, and offices around an inner courtyard.

The building reflects the Spanish Colonial tradition adapted to New Mexico, with thick adobe walls, a low-pitched flat roof carried on vigas, and a long covered portal facing the plaza. Successive occupations reshaped the structure: Pueblo forces seized the Palace during the Pueblo Revolt of 1680 and held it for more than a decade, modifying the complex with Puebloan features; the Spanish reoccupied and rebuilt it after 1693. Mexican and then United States territorial administrations continued to use the Palace through the nineteenth century, each adding portal posts, plaster coats, and interior partitions.

The Palace served as the seat of government under Spain, Mexico, the short-lived Confederate occupation, and the United States, witnessing nearly every major political transition in New Mexico's recorded history. Lew Wallace, governor of the territory from 1878 to 1881, completed portions of the novel Ben-Hur in the Palace. The Historical Society of New Mexico began collecting in the building in the 1880s, and in 1909 the territorial legislature converted it into the Museum of New Mexico, the first state museum in the Southwest.

A long restoration overseen by the museum returned the portal and exterior to their early appearance and stabilized the adobe walls. Today the Palace of the Governors operates as a museum of New Mexico history under the state's Department of Cultural Affairs, and Native artisans sell jewelry and pottery beneath the portal as part of a juried program. It is a designated National Historic Landmark and was among the earliest properties entered on the National Register of Historic Places. The Palace remains the defining example of Santa Fe's adobe Spanish Colonial civic architecture and the symbolic origin point of the state's preservation movement.