Bring your imagination to Cordelia Snow's Fiesta lecture, and you can take a virtual tour of the villa of Santa Fe at the turn of the 18th century. Snow is a historic-sites archaeologist with the archaeological management section of New Mexico's Historic Preservation Division.

Her lecture, Rebuilding Santa Fe, 1693-1720, paints a picture of daily life in a very different Santa Fe. The Palace of the Governors still boasted two stories, and the adobe parroquia (church), destroyed during the Pueblo Revolt, was being reconstructed on the site of the present day Cathedral Basilica of St. Francis of Assisi.

Snow's lecture is based on extensive research of period documents. One of her favorites is The Petition of Diego Arias de Quiros and the Investigation of the Entrances and Exits to Santa Fe, dated 1715.

"It's delightful, because the members of the cabildo (town council), accompanied by several of the real old-timers in Santa Fe, walk around the Plaza on the north side of the river and discuss whose fields have encroached upon the streets, and whose house was in the middle of the street. It's just absolutely charming, because it's a slice of Santa Fe that you never see," said Snow. The inspection report is filled with fascinating details, such as two houses encroaching on the street now named Cathedral Place.

Documents that might seem dry to the rest of us reveal historical gems to Snow. One such jewel is the 1711 deed of sale for property on the west side of the Plaza. The seller was a woman named Magdalena de Ogama, and the purchaser was Juan Paez Hurtado, Don Diego de Vargas' second in command.

Paez Hurtado and the cabildo planned the first Fiesta in that house in 1712, because the roof of the casa de cabildo was leaking from heavy rains. The deed of sale lists the western boundary of the property as "bushes of roses of Castile."

"So here you have the first mention of rose bushes being imported to New Mexico for landscaping purposes," Snow said.

In the lecture, Snow also discusses archaeological and documentary evidence confirming sections of the Palace of the Governors were two stories high. One document describes how a thief broke into the Palace by means of a second-story balcony.

By the time Zebulon Pike saw Santa Fe in 1807, the second story was gone.

After a stroll around the Plaza, Snow takes listeners across the Santa Fe River to the Barrio de Analco, an area where Indian servants, slaves and genizaros (captive Indians) were settled. The river created the separation between the indigenous population and the Spaniards mandated in the 1573 Laws of the Indies.

IF YOU GO

What: Lecture by Cordelia Snow
When: 6:30 p.m. Wednesday
Where: St. Francis Auditorium, New Mexico Museum of Art
Cost: $5 for the public, free for the members of the Palace Guard and the Fiesta Council.