St. Francis Cathedral, Santa Fe

This Romanesque-style cathedral is a spectacular landmark in a city dominated by traditional New Mexican adobes. Built from 1869 and dedicated in 1887, the Cathedral was the brainchild (and now the burial ground) of Jean Baptiste Lamy of France, Santa Fe’s first Archbishop and the subject of Willa Cather’s novel Death Comes for the Archbishop. Lamy imported French architects and Italian stonemasons to create a cathedral in the European style on the site of an earlier adobe church destroyed in the 1680 Pueblo Revolt. Part of that original church remains as a small chapel, containing the oldest statue of the Madonna in the US, brought from Spain in 1625. Pope Benedict XVI elevated the Cathedral to a Basilica in 2005. Mass is held here daily and there’s a Spanish mass on Sunday.

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