Mission San Rafael Arcangel by Rixie
The city of San Rafael had its beginnings as a Spanish mission. In 1817 Spanish missionaries built a sanitarium for ailing Indians, an asistencia of San Francisco's Mission Dolores, and named it after the Archangel Raphael, the angel of healing. In 1822 it became an independent mission, Mission San Rafael Arcangel, but it was short-lived. When Mexico won its independence from Spain and decided to end the mission system in 1834, Mission San Rafael was the first to be secularized.Today nothing remains of the original mission. The chapel (reconstructed in 1949 from what is now known to be a historically inaccurate drawing) is flanked by the large parish church, St. Raphael's, and the Catholic school of the same name, which dates from 1889.
Although the tiny chapel bears no resemblance to the original two-story adobe mission, it is serene and charming and worth visiting. You can sit in a pew and imagine the building filled with brown-robed Franciscan priests and Indian neophytes in the early 19th century.
The Mission gift shop next door sells postcards and religious items.