Your first feeling is a bit of a shock, for the renovator’s hand has fallen heavily upon San Miguel and, frankly speaking, it is a rather hideous old church as viewed from the street. When, however, you have rung the sacristan’s bell and a Christian Brother from the adjoining Catholic college has come with the keys to usher you within, you pass in a twinkling into the twilight heart of the Seventeenth Century. Here are blackened, old religious paintings said to have been carried by the Conquistadores as standards of defense in battle; a wonderful old bell inscribed with a prayer to St. Joseph and bearing an all but illegible date that looks surprisingly like 1356, and maybe it is; a charming old wooden cross-beam supporting the _coro_, or choir gallery, its color mellowed by time and its surface carved with rude but beautiful flutings and flourishes by some long-vanished hand of the wilderness; and so on—all delightfully embellished by the naïve expositions of the kindly Brother who acts as cicerone. And do not leave without a glimpse through the side door of the sunny quiet garden close, that lies between the church and the college building. As to the age of San Miguel, there has been much misinformation given—claims of its dating from 1543 being quite groundless. The known fact is that it was established as a chapel for the Mexican (Tlascalan) Indians who were part of the original Santa Fe colony. It therefore dates from some time on the hither side of 1605. In 1680 it suffered partial destruction in the Pueblo uprising, though its walls survived; and, after some repairs by order of De Vargas, it was finally restored completely in 1710, by the Spanish governor of that time, the Marquis de la Peñuela. The record of this fact inscribed in Spanish upon the main beam of the gallery is still one of the interesting “bits” in the church. Probably it is safe to call San Miguel the oldest existing building for Christian worship in the United States.