City: Santa Fe, NM

Category: Tours & Attractions

Telephone: (505) 982-0092

Address: 211 Old Santa Fe Trail

Description: This chapel, dedicated to Our Lady of Light, was the first Gothic structure west of the Mississippi. Today the chapel is one of Santa Fe’s top visitor attractions and a popular place for weddings and concerts. Built for the Sisters of Loretto, the style of this jewellike chapel testifies to the influence of Santa Fe’s first bishop, Frenchman Jean Baptiste Lamy. The Sisters came to Santa Fe at the request of Lamy to establish a school for young women downtown. Their Loretto Academy occupied the site upon which the neighboring Inn at Loretto now stands. The French influence includes the white altar, beautifully adorned sanctuary, rose windows, and architectural beauty modeled after Paris’s Sainte Chapelle. The chapel’s claim to fame, however, is a graceful spiral staircase that winds to the choir loft with no center support and not a single nail. Legend has it that work on the chapel was nearly done when the Sisters realized no room remained for a traditional staircase. They prayed to St. Joseph for guidance and believed he answered their novena when a carpenter arrived. He agreed to build the staircase. Using only a saw, a carpenter’s square, and tubs of hot water to soften and shape the wood, he crafted a beautiful circular staircase. He then disappeared before he could be paid. The story was featured on television’s Unsolved Mysteries in the late 1990s. The chapel is administered by the Sisters of Loretto but maintained by the Historic Santa Fe Foundation. The chapel is open from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Saturday, and from 10:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. Sunday.