About this tour
West of the Alamo's famous shrine sits a quieter plaza that, for a much longer stretch of San Antonio's history, actually mattered more. Military Plaza — the old Plaza de Armas — held the physical seat of Spanish, then Mexican, then Republic-era government in Texas, in buildings whose walls are still standing. This short walk visits the presidio captain's residence still (imprecisely) called the Governor's Palace, the plaza itself, the vanished Casas Reales where colonization petitions and wartime proclamations alike were read aloud, and the city hall built directly on that same historic ground. It's a compact loop, but it covers two and a half centuries of who was actually in charge here.