domini, domini, domini, you're all catholic now

UNESCO designated the san antonio missions, a national historical park, as a world heritage site in 2015, and it was purty great, even if most of it is WPA reconstructions --- all four of the park's missions fell into ruins in the nineteenth century, and it took events like the collapse of the bell  tower at san jose in 1928 to spur action --- original paint here and there and some really wonderful features, if heavily restored ---

mission san josé y san miguel de aguayo, "queen of the missions," built 1768 - 1782, mostly reconstructed by the WPA 1933 - 1939

one of the more awesome door openings i've ever seen --- load-bearing masonry walls give one a lot to work with

mission san francisco de la espada has a fine, still-working aqueduct, which i failed to photograph properly

the church at mission san juan capistrano was an adaptive use of a granary, thus the weird proportions  --- assholes stole three eighteenth-century, wooden altar statues in 2000 ---

mission nuestra señora de la purísima concepción de acuña, completed in 1731, is the best-preserved of the san antonio missions --- brightly colored frescoes originally decorated inside and out, and fragments still survive