The Alamo map
29.43° N · 98.49° W · San Antonio, Bexar County · Alamo Plaza, downtown
The Alamo is what survives of Mission San Antonio de Valero, founded in 1718 and fought over in 1836. The church front everybody photographs faces west across Alamo Plaza, one block east of the San Antonio River and the River Walk, in the middle of the downtown grid.
Alamo Plaza sits between Houston Street and Crockett Street. The river loops around the plaza to the west and south.
Where it is and how to get there
The site is inside the downtown loop of freeways. I-37 runs two blocks east of the plaza, I-35 skirts the north side and I-10 joins both through the middle of town; the Commerce Street and Houston Street exits from I-37 are the closest. Nothing about the visit is a drive — the plaza is walking distance from the convention center, the Menger Hotel next door, La Villita to the south and Market Square about a mile west.
From Austin it is 80 miles south on I-35. From Houston it is about 200 miles west on I-10. From Corpus Christi it is roughly 145 miles northwest on I-37, which ends downtown a few hundred yards from the plaza. New Braunfels in Comal County is 30 miles up I-35 if you are coming from the Hill Country side.
What is on the site
| Feature | Description |
|---|---|
| The church | The unfinished stone chapel begun in the 1750s. The curved gable across the top — the shape everyone recognises — was added by the U.S. Army around 1850, more than a decade after the battle |
| The Long Barrack | The mission's two-storey convento along the west side of the courtyard, the oldest standing structure on the grounds and the scene of the last fighting in 1836 |
| Alamo Plaza | The open plaza in front. Most of the mission's walled compound lay under what is now the plaza and the buildings on its west side, so the fortified perimeter was far larger than the surviving stonework suggests |
| The gardens | Walled grounds behind and north of the church, on the line of the old acequia that carried river water to the mission fields |
| The Cenotaph | The tall carved monument standing in the plaza, put up in the late 1930s for the centennial of the Republic |
| Plaza frontage | Early twentieth-century commercial buildings along the west side, several of which have been taken into the site for exhibit and archive space |
Mission, fort, battle
The Franciscans established San Antonio de Valero in 1718, the first of the missions on this stretch of river, and moved it more than once before settling on the present ground. It was secularised in 1793 and the buildings passed to the army. The name in common use came from a Spanish cavalry company from Álamo de Parras that was quartered there. In February and March 1836 a garrison held the compound against a Mexican army for thirteen days, and the fall of the place on 6 March became the rallying point of the Texas revolution — the subject of the Republic of Texas map and of most of what followed that year.
The other four missions
The Alamo is the northernmost of five Spanish colonial missions strung along the San Antonio River. Concepción, San José, San Juan Capistrano and Espada run south of downtown over roughly eight miles and are administered as San Antonio Missions National Historical Park; a paved hike-and-bike route along the river, the Mission Reach, links them. All five, the Alamo included, were inscribed together as a World Heritage Site in 2015 — the only one in Texas. San José is the largest and keeps its full walled quadrangle, which shows what the Alamo's compound would have looked like intact.
Elsewhere in town, the Tower of the Americas and Hemisfair sit six blocks south of the plaza, and Six Flags Fiesta Texas is out on I-10 on the northwest edge of the city. South Texas begins immediately below the city; the Hill Country begins immediately above it.
Alamo Plaza and the surrounding streets are under a long redevelopment, so pedestrian routes and closures shift.