San Antonio's UNESCO listing, inscribed in 2015 under criterion (ii), covers five missions together: the Alamo, managed by the Texas General Land Office, and four National Park Service-managed missions, Concepcion, San Jose, San Juan, and Espada. All five are free to enter. The Alamo requires a free reserved ticket to enter the Church specifically; the four NPS missions are open daily 9am-5pm with no reservation needed.
The Alamo sits outside the National Park Service system entirely, managed instead by the Texas General Land Office since 2011, while the other four missions are run by the NPS as San Antonio Missions National Historical Park, worth understanding as a genuinely practical split, not a minor technicality, since ticketing and hours differ between them.
A free ticket is required only to enter the Church building itself, the rest of the Alamo complex is open without one, worth booking that specific reservation ahead if seeing the Church interior matters, rather than assuming general admission covers it.
Mission San Jose earned that description from being the largest of the five missions and from a substantial 1930s WPA restoration that returned much of its original design, worth treating as the most complete single stop among the four NPS missions if time only allows visiting one.
The Alamo sits in downtown San Antonio; the four NPS missions stretch south along the San Antonio River, connected by the paved Mission Reach hike-and-bike trail.
San Antonio's UNESCO story spans five sites under two different managers, with the Alamo needing a specific advance reservation for its Church and the NPS missions needing none. Both featured landmarks are covered in full below.
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