San Antonio Audio Walking Tour

Highlights

• 
  Alamodome

  Opened in 1993 as one of the largest public construction projects in San Antonio history, the Alamodome seats 65,000 and has echoed with championship cheers and military homecomings alike. The Alamodome was built primarily to attract an NBA franchise, and in 1993 — the same year it opened — San Antonio was awarded the San Antonio Spurs, who had previously been playing in the HemisFair Arena.

• 
  The Alamo

  Picture thirteen days of siege ending here in the spring of 1836. This low limestone church, formally Mission San Antonio de Valero, was founded by Franciscan friars in 1718.

• 
  San Antonio River Walk

  Your feet rest fifteen feet below street level, on a promenade born from a catastrophic 1921 flood. On September 9, 1921, a massive storm dropped eleven inches of rain in just a few hours, sending the San Antonio River surging through downtown.

• 
  Tower of the Americas

  Rising 750 feet over downtown San Antonio, the Tower of the Americas remains the enduring symbol of the 1968 HemisFair World's Fair. At 750 feet tall — 622 feet of concrete shaft topped by a 128-foot observation deck and rotating restaurant — it was the tallest structure in Texas when it opened in April 1968.

• 
  San Fernando Cathedral

  Notice San Fernando Cathedral, the oldest cathedral sanctuary anywhere on American soil. Construction began in 1738, when Canary Island colonists who had arrived in San Antonio just seven years earlier laid the first stones.

All 40 stops

• The Alamo (Downtown)

  Picture thirteen days of siege ending here in the spring of 1836.

• San Antonio River Walk (Downtown)

  Your feet rest fifteen feet below street level, on a promenade born from a catastrophic 1921 flood.

• San Fernando Cathedral (Downtown)

  Notice San Fernando Cathedral, the oldest cathedral sanctuary anywhere on American soil.

• Military Plaza (Downtown)

  Picture Spanish soldiers drilling on this old parade ground of Presidio San Antonio de Béxar.

• La Villita (Downtown)

  La Villita — the Little Village — is the oldest neighborhood in San Antonio, abandoned, flooded, rebuilt and reimagined so many times it seems to…

• Market Square / El Mercado (Downtown)

  El Mercado has been San Antonio's marketplace since the Spanish set up a mercado here in the eighteenth century, and it remains the largest Mexican…

• HemisFair Park (Downtown)

  Picture twenty nations gathering here for the six-month World's Fair of 1968.

• Tower of the Americas (Downtown)

  Rising 750 feet over downtown San Antonio, the Tower of the Americas remains the enduring symbol of the 1968 HemisFair World's Fair.

• King William Historic District (King William)

  German merchant families — Guenther, Steves, Wulff, Groos — built extravagant Victorian mansions along the street they called Kaisers Wilhelm Strasse, and their ambition still…

• Southtown Arts District (Southtown)

  Southtown is San Antonio's most vibrant arts district and one of the most authentic expressions of the city's Mexican-American cultural identity.

• The Pearl (Pearl District)

  Picture a Texas brewery reborn into one of modern American history's most celebrated redevelopment projects.

• Mission San José (Mission Trail)

  Mission San José y San Miguel de Aguayo earned its nickname, the Queen of the Missions, and it is not hard to understand why.

• Mission Concepción (Mission Trail)

  Plain as it looks, Mission Nuestra Señora de la Purísima Concepción de Acuña hides one of the most remarkable architectural secrets in North America.

• Mission Espada (Mission Trail)

  Water is the real marvel at Mission San Francisco de la Espada, the southernmost of San Antonio's five Spanish colonial missions.

• Mission San Juan Capistrano (Mission Trail)

  Do not confuse Mission San Juan Capistrano de Béxar with its more famous California namesake; this modest, tranquil complex tells a story of agricultural self-sufficiency…

• Acequia Madre (Mission Trail)

  In 1718, Spanish settlers began digging the Acequia Madre — the Mother Ditch — the engineering backbone of colonial San Antonio.

• Spanish Governor's Palace (Downtown)

  Ten rooms around an interior patio make up the Spanish Governor's Palace, the only aristocratic Spanish colonial residence left in Texas.

• Brackenridge Park Overview (Brackenridge)

  George Washington Brackenridge gave the city 343 acres of live oak and cypress woodland in 1899, and Brackenridge Park spreads out under this overlook.

• San Antonio Museum of Art (Pearl District)

  Turreted brick towers rise over the San Antonio Museum of Art, a Victorian industrial complex built in 1883 as the Lone Star Brewery.

• Brackenridge Park (Brackenridge)

  Limestone bluffs, cypress-lined river banks, and ancient live oak canopies have made Brackenridge Park San Antonio's primary public green space for more than a century.

• Japanese Tea Garden (Brackenridge)

  Beauty, prejudice, and hard-won restoration all run through the story of the Japanese Tea Garden, one of the most serene public spaces in San Antonio.

• Sunken Garden Theater (Brackenridge)

  Music has filled this rocky hollow for nearly a century at the Sunken Garden Theater, a New Deal-era amphitheater carved into the same abandoned cement…

• San Antonio Zoo (Brackenridge)

  Few zoos in the United States are older than the San Antonio Zoo, and fewer still sit inside an old limestone quarry.

• Witte Museum (Brackenridge)

  Alfred Witte, a local businessman, funded the first building of the Witte Museum in 1926, and it has grown into San Antonio's premier natural history…

• Instituto Cultural Mexicano (Downtown)

  Very few Mexican government-operated cultural centers exist in the United States, and the Instituto Cultural Mexicano makes San Antonio a living bridge between Mexico and…

• Breckenridge Neighborhood (Brackenridge)

  Walk these leafy streets north of downtown San Antonio and you are in the residential district that grew up in the shadow of George Brackenridge's…

• South Alamo Street Arts Corridor (Southtown)

  South Alamo Street is the spine of San Antonio's Southtown arts corridor and one of the most creative stretches of pavement in Texas.

• Dolorosa Street (Downtown)

  Dolorosa Street — Street of Sorrows — is one of the original thoroughfares of Spanish colonial San Antonio, and its name carries three centuries of…

• Medina River (South San Antonio)

  Empires once drew their boundary at the Medina River, and its oak brush flats saw the bloodiest battle in Texas history.

• San Antonio Arsenal (King William)

  Established in 1859, the San Antonio Arsenal supplied the entire western frontier of the antebellum United States.

• Union Station (Downtown)

  Built in 1902 at the peak of America's railroad era, Union Station was San Antonio's gateway to California for travelers and freight moving east from…

• St. Mark's Episcopal Church (Downtown)

  St. Mark's Episcopal Church has watched San Antonio grow from a frontier town into a modern American city since its consecration in 1859.

• First Presbyterian Church (Downtown)

  First Presbyterian Church, founded in 1839 just three years after the Battle of the Alamo, is the oldest continuously operating Protestant congregation in San Antonio.

• San Antonio de Béxar (Downtown)

  On May 1, 1718, Governor Martín de Alarcón founded the Spanish colonial settlement of San Antonio de Béxar with roughly 72 settlers, soldiers, and clergy…

• Main Avenue High School (Downtown)

  Founded in 1907 as San Antonio's first permanent public high school, Main Avenue High School educated generations of San Antonians across lines of class, culture…

• McNay Art Museum (North San Antonio)

  Marion Koogler McNay's Spanish Colonial Revival mansion, set in 23 acres of landscaped grounds, is now the McNay Art Museum — the result of one…

• Alamodome (East Downtown)

  Opened in 1993 as one of the largest public construction projects in San Antonio history, the Alamodome seats 65,000 and has echoed with championship cheers…

• Tobin Center for the Performing Arts (Downtown)

  Preservation and modern performance meet at the Tobin Center for the Performing Arts, San Antonio's premier concert and theater venue.

• Guadalupe Cultural Arts Center (West Side)

  Chicano artists, writers, and activists made the Guadalupe Cultural Arts Center the heart of San Antonio's arts movement and one of the most important community…

• Main Plaza (Downtown)

  Main Plaza — Plaza de las Islas — has been the civic heart of San Antonio since 1731, and history lies densely layered beneath your…

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