Albuquerque, United States: Self-Guided Walking Tour

The best things to do in Albuquerque include exploring Old Town, discovering Pueblo and Spanish colonial heritage, visiting museums, and following the city’s Route 66 and university landmarks. Set beside the Rio Grande and framed by the Sandia Mountains, Albuquerque brings together Indigenous traditions, contemporary art, scientific research, and distinctive Southwestern architecture. Neywo also offers a free audio guide for Albuquerque with 89 narrated places.

What to see in Albuquerque

Old Town and Albuquerque Museum

Old Town is the historic heart of Albuquerque, shaped by Spanish colonial history and the traditions of the Rio Grande valley. Its adobe buildings and plazas reflect the city’s layered cultural heritage.

The Albuquerque Museum, in the center of Old Town, brings together the art of the Southwest and the history of Albuquerque and the Middle Rio Grande Valley. Its collection includes contemporary works, artifacts spanning four centuries of local life, early maps, conquistador armor, traditional weavings, and a large photo archive. An outdoor sculpture garden adds an open-air setting for the museum’s artworks.

Nearby, the New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science traces the story of the universe, Earth, dinosaurs, ancient seacoasts, volcanic landscapes, and the Ice Age through eight permanent time halls. It also has a planetarium and the Lockheed Martin DynaTheater. The museum is closed for major renovations as of late 2025 and is expected to reopen in spring 2026; its mobile exhibition, New Mexico Rocks, continues outside the main building.

Another nearby stop is ¡Explora! Science Center and Children’s Museum, an interactive space focused on science, mathematics, and art. More than 250 exhibits invite visitors to experiment, including a laminar flow fountain, an experiment bar, an arts and crafts area, and a high-wire bicycle balanced above the floor.

Pueblo and Spanish colonial heritage

The Indian Pueblo Cultural Center is owned and operated by New Mexico’s nineteen Pueblos. Opened in 1976, it preserves and shares Pueblo history, art, and culture from pre-Columbian times to the present. Its museum displays archaeological objects, jewelry, textiles, baskets, paintings, murals, photographs, and contemporary works. Weekend dances and artist demonstrations bring living traditions into the courtyard.

Los Candelarias Chapel, also known as the San Antonio Chapel, is a smaller but especially evocative reminder of Albuquerque’s past. Built in 1888, it served Los Candelarias, one of the small plazas that once stood near Old Town in the Rio Grande valley. The adobe chapel follows the long rectangular form associated with Spanish colonial churches in New Mexico, with a bell tower, clapboard details, and a corrugated-metal roof.

The New Mexico Holocaust & Intolerance Museum is dedicated to remembering the Holocaust and confronting hatred, prejudice, and other forms of intolerance. It presents a place for remembrance and education in Albuquerque.

Downtown architecture and Route 66

Downtown Albuquerque is a rewarding area for architecture and city history. Its landmarks reveal the influence of the railroad, Pueblo Revival, Spanish Colonial, and Art Deco design.

The KiMo Theater, at Central Avenue and Fifth Street, is one of the city’s defining buildings. Built in 1927, it combines Pueblo Revival features with American Art Deco in a style known as Pueblo Deco. Its three-story stucco façade, stepped forms, rounded edges, vertical lines, and Indigenous-inspired details make it a distinctive example of architectural fusion.

The Huning Highlands Conoco Service Station offers a more intimate piece of Route 66 history. Built in 1937, the remarkably intact gas station was designed to resemble a cottage, with a steeply pitched roof, chimney, white glazed brick, and green trim. Its original office and garage bays remain part of the building. After operating as a service station until the early 1980s, it became the headquarters of the Albuquerque Conservation Association in 1992 and now hosts preservation workshops and community activities.

For contemporary art, the Richard Levy Gallery has been part of downtown Albuquerque’s art scene since 1991. Its program covers photography, painting, sculpture, and new media, with a focus on contemporary work.

The University of New Mexico campus

The University of New Mexico campus is known for its Pueblo Revival architecture and concentration of museums and cultural institutions.

The University of New Mexico Art Museum holds nearly 30,000 objects, making it the largest fine art collection in New Mexico. Its collection includes American and European painting and sculpture, Latin American art, photography, and works on paper, with artists such as Georgia O’Keeffe, Robert Rauschenberg, and Diego Rivera represented. Temporary exhibitions, tours, lectures, and workshops connect the collection with the university’s research and teaching environment.

The Maxwell Museum of Anthropology was Albuquerque’s first public museum. Founded in 1932, it explores human history through archaeology and anthropology. Its permanent exhibits include Ancestors, which follows four million years of human evolution, and People of the Southwest, which presents 11,000 years of cultural heritage in the region.

The Jonson Gallery is a Pueblo Revival building designed by John Gaw Meem. It was the home, studio, and gallery of modernist painter Raymond Jonson and became a center for abstract art in New Mexico. The collections moved to the University of New Mexico Art Museum in 2009, so the building is now best appreciated from outside.

The Museum of Southwestern Biology is a working research and teaching facility rather than a conventional display museum. Its collections cover plants, invertebrates, and vertebrates from the American West, Central and South America, and other parts of the world. It also holds more than 500,000 frozen tissue samples, used in genetic research and studies of emerging diseases. Visits require an appointment in advance.

Ballooning, science, and discovery

The Anderson-Abruzzo Albuquerque International Balloon Museum explores the history, science, and art of ballooning and lighter-than-air flight. Its collection includes objects connected with Ed Yost, Joseph Kittinger, and Ben Abruzzo. Abruzzo and Maxie Anderson made the first gas-balloon transatlantic flight in 1978 as the crew of Double Eagle II. The museum opened on October 1, 2005, and stands near the grounds associated with Albuquerque’s major balloon event.

The Harwood Art Center, housed in the former Harwood School, gives a historic building a new cultural role. The red-brick school opened in 1925 as the Harwood Girls’ School, founded by Emily Harwood and her husband Thomas. Its Neoclassical, H-shaped building later became a community arts hub run by the Escuela del Sol Montessori school.

Explore Albuquerque with a self-guided audio tour

Neywo’s Albuquerque audio guide includes four walking tours, one bus route, and one bike route, covering 89 narrated places. The walks range from 1.61 to 2.5 km and from 43 to 82 minutes. They include downtown architecture, Old Town, the University of New Mexico campus, and the historic Highlands and Route 66 area.

The bus route covers 6.5 km in 28 minutes along Central Avenue, from Old Town to Nob Hill. The bike route follows the Rio Grande for 5.2 km in 26 minutes, with stops at the Albuquerque Aquarium and Rio Grande Nature Center State Park.

Download Neywo and explore Albuquerque at your own pace. The app tells the story of each place as you reach it, with no group and no schedule. Narration is available in 11 languages.

Albuquerque is part of New Mexico in the United States. For more places to explore in the region, consider Santa Fe, Taos, or Las Vegas, New Mexico.