Main Plaza - Where San Antonio Became a Town

Photo: Michael Barera, CC BY-SA 4.0 (cropped)

A stop on San Antonio River Walk and the Alamo, a free self-guided tour.

This is where San Antonio began as a town. On March 9, 1731, families from the Canary Islands, sent by King Philip V of Spain, arrived here and founded the villa of San Fernando de Bexar, the first official civil government in the province of Texas. They laid out this square as the Plaza de las Islas, the Plaza of the Islands, with the church on its west side.

For more than a century this plaza was the center of civic and religious life in Spanish and Mexican San Antonio. Many families here today trace their roots to those Canary Islanders.

On the south side rises the Bexar County Courthouse, completed in 1896 to a design by James Riely Gordon in red sandstone and granite. Look for the bronze Founders Monument, showing a Canary Islander couple, a friar, a soldier and a Native American man, a reminder that San Antonio grew from several peoples. The fountains and shady benches make a good resting spot.

Getting here: Follow the River Walk around the bend and upstream to the Commerce Street bridge, climb to street level and walk a few steps west to Main Plaza.

Did you know?: Main Plaza is one of the few Spanish colonial plazas in the United States that still survive. A 2008 renovation added its fountains, seating and history pavers.

Photo op: From the plaza's east side, frame the fountains with the cathedral's twin towers behind them.

More on Wikipedia: Bexar County Courthouse

Main Plaza - Where San Antonio Became a Town

Stops on this tour