Stop by renovated Palace of the Governors

The Palace of the Governors is ready to welcome visitors again, whether tourists, local residents curious about their ancestors or schoolchildren ready to learn New Mexico history.

The building, an anchor of the Plaza for four centuries, is essential to relaying the story of New Mexico from prehistory to today. It has served as a seat of government, the place of rest for those doing the governing, and for the period in which Spanish settlers were expelled after the Pueblo Revolt until the reconquest, a home for hundreds of Pueblo Indians. Since 1909, it has been a museum.

Beloved by the people of Santa Fe, the preservation of this building and its mission to interpret history is an essential element of the New Mexico History Museum — the palace, in and of itself, is now the grandest exhibit in that museum.

Renovations to ensure the palace remains robust going forward have lasted five years. This weekend, the museum reopens. On Sunday, the Palace of the Governors hosts a free community event, History Homecoming: Past, Present and Palace. It lasts from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

On a tour of the renovated building earlier this week — work was still ongoing — the cool interior retained the sense this is a place apart from the world outside. It is timeless. The whitewashed walls were gleaming, with a clean line of sight from one end of the building to the other. Exhibition rooms are numbered now, making it easier to find what is on display. Visitors will be able to begin their tour in a room designed to share the span of the Palace of the Governors’ years, a way to understand the scope of what the building has been across 400plus years.

There’s an effort in what is being presented to show different facets of New Mexico’s past — whether Spanish Colonial bultos and santos, the 18 miles of the Lamy branch of the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway (complete with an actual train) and its impact on Santa Fe, or a traveling exhibit featuring Native voting activist Miguel Trujillo of Isleta Pueblo. He was the man responsible for filing the lawsuit that won Native people the right to vote in New Mexico in 1949. Those are just some of the exhibitions on display, with frequent rotations promised so each time a visitor comes to the Palace, there will be new reasons to stop by.

From deeper in the past are the rooms that peel back the walls and floors, showing the construction of this building of adobe, revealing foundations and detailing the structure’s uses over the various periods of New Mexico’s past. This is New Mexico’s story told through the life of this one building, an incredible resource for the New Mexicans of today.

Spanish settlers built the Palace; Pueblo people occupied it, then the Mexican and U.S. territorial governments operated from it. As New Mexico history buffs know, territorial Gov. Lew Wallace wrote portions of his famous novel, Ben Hur: A Tale of the Christ, at the Palace. His bust is there, as is a bust of Donaciano Vigil, second territorial governor of New Mexico, a man born under Spanish rule who lived to help the area transition to life under the United States.

The Plaza is a National Historic Landmark and on the National Register of Historic Places, but as important as such recognition is, what matters most about the Palace of the Governors is that it contains our history. The oldest public building in continuous use constructed by European settlers in the continental United State, it has evolved and changed to fit the needs of people through decades and centuries.

Still standing 400-plus years later, the Palace of the Governors is a living reminder the past should not be preserved in amber, but rather adapted to suit the conditions of today so it remains a vibrant part of our town and state, with its history informing our present.