Photo: DatraxMada (CC BY-SA 4.0)
A self-guided audio walking tour of downtown San Antonio. It starts at the Alamo Church and the Long Barrack of Mission San Antonio de Valero, where the siege of 1836 ended on the sixth of March, and the 1936 Cenotaph, then passes the Menger Hotel of 1859 and Saint Joseph's Church, enclosed by commerce after its parishioners refused to sell. On the River Walk it tells how a 1926 plan to pave over the bend gave way to Robert Hugman's design, built with WPA labor, and goes on through the Arneson River Theatre and La Villita to the Tower of the Americas, built for HemisFair '68, and the limestone houses of the King William district. Back north come the Bexar County Courthouse, Main Plaza, laid out by Canary Islander settlers in 1730, San Fernando Cathedral, the Spanish Governor's Palace, City Hall on Military Plaza, the home of José Antonio Navarro, Market Square and the Majestic Theatre. Mission Concepción, dedicated in 1755 and built by Native American laborers, is a few kilometers south by road or the river trail.
22 narrations, yours to keep — no subscription, no expiry. Works offline once downloaded, and if it isn’t for you we’ll refund it.
Going somewhere with no signal? Put the guide on your home screen first, then download it from that icon while you are on wi-fi — that way you download once, and it works in airplane mode with no roaming charges. Show me the order →
Every claim in this tour traces back to a named source — excavation records, the heritage authority for the site, and the primary texts themselves. Nothing is copied from other guidebooks, and anything we can't source doesn't make the recording.
Each stop is built from OpenStreetMap · 133 features in this old town (the field-surveyed mapping database behind Apple Maps), Wikidata · 34 cross-referenced entries (peer-reviewed structured records), the heritage authority below, and the primary historical texts where they exist.
Cross-referenced against Modern excavation publications · academic peer-review.
Every sentence is checked against those sources before it is recorded. If a claim can't be traced, it doesn't make the audio.
Every tour is reviewed by a person before it goes on sale. Stop selection, the route and anything ambiguous come back to the editor for a decision, and those questions routinely send a stop back for another accuracy pass. Nothing publishes on a machine’s say-so.
Spot anything inaccurate? Email [email protected] — fixed in the next pass.
The Alamo Church, Long Barrack, Alamo Cenotaph, Menger Hotel, Saint Joseph's Church, The River Walk.
Arneson River Theatre, La Villita Historic Arts Village, Tower of the Americas, King William Historic District, Villa Finale, Steves Homestead, Guenther House.
Bexar County Courthouse, Main Plaza, San Fernando Cathedral, Spanish Governor's Palace, Military Plaza and City Hall, Casa Navarro, Market Square, Majestic Theatre, Mission Concepción.
The unfinished limestone church of Mission San Antonio de Valero, besieged for thirteen days until the garrison was killed on 6 March 1836.
The lower story of the mission convento begun in 1724, where defenders fell back and made their last stand in the final assault.
Robert Hugman's river park in the downtown bend, built from 1938 to 1941, with a bypass channel and floodgates to control flooding.
A neighborhood of adobe, limestone and palisado houses on a former Coahuiltecan village site, restored from 1939 to 1941.
The Canary Islanders' church, completed in 1755 and enlarged in Gothic Revival style from 1868, now the cathedral.
The stone church dedicated in 1755, built on bedrock by Native American laborers, with painted frescos surviving in four rooms.
Tap "Start Walking Tour" and allow location access. The map shows all 22 narration points.
Follow the suggested route or explore freely. GPS tracks your position. Reach a site and the narration plays automatically.
Each site has its own narration. 22 narration points.
Narrations play when you reach each site. No buttons, no track numbers. Walk naturally — the stories find you.
Premium narration that sounds like a documentary. Warm and knowledgeable, not a textbook reading.
Every narration is drafted, cross-checked against primary sources, then passed through a second editorial pass that strips unsupported claims. Dates, names, and citations verified.
See all narration points on the map. Tap any point to hear it early or replay it later.
Every narrated point in San Antonio — the Alamo, the River and the Missions, each with its own narration.
Spend an hour or a full day. Skip sites, revisit favourites, take breaks. The tour adapts to you.
22 narration points, including The Alamo Church, Alamo Cenotaph, The River Walk, La Villita Historic Arts Village and Tower of the Americas. That is about 39 minutes of narration in all, and you walk between the stops at your own pace.
Yes. It plays in your phone’s browser as you walk: no guide, no group, no app to install and no fixed start time.
Three ways, all built in:
The map-tap option means you can stand anywhere — even at home before you travel — and play any narration. GPS just makes it hands-free while you’re actually walking the site.
No. Use the “Download for offline” button before you go, and the entire tour — audio, maps, narration text — works without any data connection. Tap-to-play and the map both work fully offline. GPS itself doesn’t need data; only the download does.
Add the icon first, then download from the icon. On iPhone a guide downloaded in Safari cannot be seen by the home screen icon, so downloading first means downloading the whole thing twice.
Putting it on your home screen — iPhone or iPad (Safari):
On Android (Chrome): tap the three-dot menu at the top right, tap Add to Home screen (some phones say Install app), then confirm. On Android either order works.
If you opened this link from inside Instagram, Facebook or Gmail, you are in that app’s built-in browser. It cannot add anything to your home screen, and a guide downloaded there is thrown away when the app closes. Open the link in Safari or Chrome first.
Two backstops. First, the map shows every site — just tap the marker for the place in front of you. Second, you can manually queue any narration even when GPS is off. The platform never assumes GPS works; it’s the convenience layer, not the gate.
The audio runs ~1–2 hours total, but you walk at your own pace. 22 narration points across the site. Most visitors take 2–4 hours; some spread it over multiple visits. Once you buy it, it’s yours — there’s no expiry and no subscription. Come back next year if you like; the link in your receipt always works.
One purchase covers one device session. Most couples share earbuds and use a single phone — the audio is paced for that. If you want everyone listening on their own device, each person needs their own purchase. We do not gate sharing aggressively; we trust visitors to do the right thing.
Full refund if you never trigger a single narration on-site. Partial refund based on how far you got. See the refund policy for specifics.