The old Spanish plaza , still at the heart of Taos, is now ringed by jewelry stores, art galleries and restaurants; all conform to the predominant Pueblo motif of rounded brown adobe. Specific sights are few - a small museum off the lobby of the La Fonda de Taos hotel has a collection of sexy but amateurish paintings by D.H.Lawrence, and the tree-filled square itself is often animated by guitar-toting buskers - but the surrounding streets are perfect for an aimless stroll, and it's easy to spend half a day just mooching around. Some of the best places to eat or drink, as well as a number of top-notch art and crafts galleries, are on Bent Street , a block north of the plaza. Bent Street takes its name not from any irregularities, but from the first American governor of New Mexico, Charles Bent; his house here, in which he was murdered in 1847, has been preserved as a museum of frontier Taoseño life (daily: summer 9am-5pm; winter 10am-4pm; $2). A single $20 ticket, valid for a year, grants admission to both this and six other Taos museums, including the four large enough to be described here.

Just east of the plaza, across the highway at the end of Taos's sole surviving stretch of wooden boardwalk, is the dusty but evocative adobe abode that was home to mountain man, mason and part-time US cavalry officer Kit Carson for 25 years in the mid-1800s. It too is now a museum , filled with saddles, rifles and Wild West paraphernalia (daily: May-Oct 8am-6pm; Nov-April 9am-5pm; $5). Two blocks south of the plaza at 222 Ledoux St, the much-restored 1790 house of artist and collector Ernest L. Blumenschein , co-founder of the town's 1920s arts colony, displays paintings and furniture (daily: April-Oct 9am-5pm; Nov-March 10am-4pm; $5).

Two miles north of the Taos Pueblo turning, reached by a dirt road that angles into a tricky five-way intersection, the Millicent Rogers Museum (April-Oct daily 10am-5pm; Nov-March daily except Mon 10am-5pm; $6) shows off a superb collection of craft works. Objects range from Ancestral Puebloan and Mimbres pottery to the contemporary black-on-black ceramics of San Ildefonso Pueblo potter Maria Martinez, plus Hopi kachinas and beautiful Navajo blankets. Affecting exhibits trace the development of Spanish colonial religious art in the New World; the highlight is a "Death Cart," in which a skeleton holding a bow and arrow rides in a rickety wooden carriage.

Taos plaza and the museums

• Taos plaza and the museums

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