National Hispanic Cultural Center

The Barelas neighborhood has been a crossroads since the days of the Camino Real — the Spanish colonial trade road running between Mexico and northern New Mexico — and the National Hispanic Cultural Center sits squarely in that inheritance. Opened in 2000 on a 20-acre campus along the Rio Grande, it hosts around 700 events a year across three theatres, an art museum, a library, and a genealogy center. The anchor is the largest concave fresco in North America. That alone is worth the detour.