Welcome to the Old Town Market San Diego where you will enjoy...

Shopping • Free Museum • Food
Live Entertainment • Working Artisans • Cart Merchants

Join us for free, historic storytelling, shows and entertainment every day of the week. Shop in our 40 unique gift stores, watch working artisans, or enjoy a bite to eat. Learn about the rich history of Old Town San Diego in our free museum. We invite you to visit our Festival Marketplace and experience Old Town San Diego, the Birthplace of California.

Archeologist piecing together one of the many ceramic objects found on the site

El Museo at the Casa de Aguirre
In early 1994, as we began to prepare for the rebuilding of the historic 1853 Casa de Aguirre, we needed to find the original foundations to properly place the building. The archeological dig for those foundations did indeed open the door to the past.  Four years later we had unearthed not only the foundations but had recovered thousands of artifacts from the site that told the wonderful and historically important story of the people who had lived, worked and played here.  The museum at the Casa de Aguirre tells their stories and relates how they had such tremendous impact on the city of San Diego and southern California from 1840 to 1870.

You will enjoy this small but important part of San Diego’s history. The museum can be quickly seen and yet the story it has to tell will be long remembered.