New Mexico Santa Fe

Santa Fe works differently from other American cities. The Plaza has been a center of commerce and community since the Spanish colonial period, Native American artisans have spread their work under the Palace of the Governors portal every day for generations. The buildings are adobe, built from the earth beneath them, and the light on those earth-toned walls in the late afternoon has been making painters move here since the early 20th century. This is a city with genuine depth.

Santa Fe’s accommodation culture is rooted in the adobe tradition, and its best properties treat the building as part of the experience. Inn of the Five Graces, a compound of Tibetan-decorated adobe casitas on a narrow street off the Plaza, is one of the most extraordinary boutique hotels in America: every surface covered in antique textiles, jewel-toned tiles, and objects collected from across Central Asia. La Fonda on the Plaza has occupied its corner since before it became a Fred Harvey Hotel in 1926, and its lobby and bar are genuine architectural landmarks. The many smaller posadas and guesthouses in the historic Eastside district place you within walking distance of Canyon Road’s galleries and the city’s finest restaurants.

Santa Fe is America’s third-largest art market by sales volume, after New York and Los Angeles. Canyon Road concentrates over 80 galleries in a mile-long historic district of adobe buildings and sculpture gardens, ranging from serious contemporary fine art to high quality Native American and Spanish colonial work. The Georgia O’Keeffe Museum downtown and her working studio at Ghost Ranch (90 minutes north) illuminate why the Chama River valley and its white cliffs were so central to her vision. Meow Wolf’s House of Eternal Return, an hands-on narrative art installation in a converted bowling alley, represents a completely different artistic ambition, and has become one of the most talked-about art experiences in the American Southwest.

The greater Santa Fe area contains some of the most significant living Indigenous cultural sites in North America. Taos Pueblo, an hour’s drive north, is a continuously inhabited multi-story adobe community that has been home to Taos Pueblo people for over 1,000 years, it is one of the oldest continuously occupied structures in the United States and a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Bandelier National Monument preserves ancestral Pueblo cliff dwellings carved into volcanic tuff in Frijoles Canyon. The Eight Northern Pueblos, including Pojoaque, Nambé, Ohkay Owingeh, San Ildefonso, Santa Clara, Tesuque, Picurís, and Taos, each hold feast days and ceremonial dances throughout the year that are sometimes open to respectful outside visitors.

New Mexican cuisine is a distinct regional tradition with no close equivalent in American cooking. The Hatch and Pueblo green chiles, roasted over open flames at every roadside stand from August through October, are the defining flavor, stuffed into everything from breakfast burritos to stacked enchiladas. The Shed and La Choza are the pilgrimage spots for traditional New Mexican cooking; Joseph’s Culinary Pub and Eloisa represent the city’s more contemporary restaurant scene. The farmers markets at the Railyard are extraordinary in summer and fall with local produce, piñon nuts, dried chiles, and handmade tortillas.

Santa Fe sits at the foot of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, and the wilderness begins immediately east of the city. Hyde Memorial State Park, 8 miles up Hyde Park Road, offers accessible forest access. The Pecos Wilderness, an hour’s drive east, contains a genuine high-altitude mountain environment: Wheeler Peak, New Mexico’s highest point at 13,161 feet, is a serious but non-technical day hike from Taos Ski Valley.