The Alamo
Spanish mission church of the 1750s, later a fortified compound and site of the 1836 siege.
Mission San Antonio de Valero was founded in 1718 by Franciscan friars and became home to Coahuiltecan and other Indigenous people, who supplied most of the labour that built it. Work on the present limestone church began around 1758 after an earlier structure collapsed; its carved Spanish Colonial doorway with niches for saints was finished, but the vaults and towers were not, which is why the roofline ends in the curved parapet added by the US Army in 1850. The mission was secularised in 1793.
In February and March 1836 the compound was held by a small Texian and Tejano garrison against the Mexican army during the Texas Revolution, and almost all the defenders died when it was stormed on 6 March. The surviving church and Long Barrack later served as a quartermaster's depot and a store before preservation campaigns led by Adina De Zavala and Clara Driscoll. The site is now managed for the State of Texas, with a Collections Center and daily guided and living-history programmes.
Highlights
- Carved Spanish Colonial church doorway with empty saints' niches
- Curved parapet added by the US Army in 1850
- Long Barrack, the mission's surviving convento range
- Ralston Family Collections Center with the Phil Collins collection
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