UNESCO WORLD HERITAGE SITE

SAN ANTONIO MISSIONS

The San Antonio Missions National Historical Park, along with the Alamo, the park was named the first World Heritage Site in Texas by the United Nations Organization for Education, Science and Culture (UNESCO), and includes the city’s four southernmost Spanish colonial missions – Concepción, San José, San Juan and Espada. In the 18th century, Spanish priests established these five Catholic missions along the San Antonio River to serve as the center of an ethnically diverse society. Today, the missions – walled compounds encompassing a church and buildings where the priests and local Native Americans lived – represent the largest concentration of Spanish colonial missions in North America.