Taos Pueblo stands at the foot of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains about three miles north of the town of Taos: two great terraced houses of adobe facing each other across a plaza and the creek that runs between them. The people of Taos, who speak Tiwa, call the north house Hlauuma and the south house Hlaukwima. Both have stood, repaired and replastered over and over, for something like a thousand years, and the north house is among the most painted and photographed buildings in the country.
Inside the old walls, Taos tradition forbids electricity and running water. Red Willow Creek, coming down from Blue Lake in the mountains behind, has long supplied the village's drinking and cooking water. Few people live in the old houses all year now; most of the roughly 1,900 people living on Taos lands have homes outside the walls, though families keep their rooms in the north and south houses. The walls are earth mixed with straw and water, and keeping them sound is constant work.
Near the entrance stands the chapel of San Gerónimo, the pueblo's patron saint. West of it, the broken tower of the earlier church, destroyed in the fighting of 1847, rises over the village cemetery.
The pueblo is a living community and the visit is on its terms. There is a fee and a charge for cameras; people are not photographed without their permission; the cemetery and the kivas are closed to visitors, and doors are entered only where they open onto shops. The village closes for ceremonies and for about ten weeks from late winter into spring, so check before going. It has been a National Historic Landmark since 1960 and a World Heritage Site since 1992.
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