The back story
Seven islands, four World Heritage sites: reading the Canaries’ great sights
Teide and its sea of clouds, the laurel forest of Garajonay, the cave temples of Risco Caído, the grid of La Laguna and César Manrique’s Lanzarote: the sights of the Canary Islands.
Photo Credit
Image courtesy of © Wladyslaw · CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia CommonsUNESCO lists four World Heritage sites in the Canary Islands. Two are national parks: Teide on Tenerife, inscribed in 2007 for a volcano that rises some 7,500 metres from the ocean floor, and Garajonay on La Gomera, inscribed in 1986, where laurel forest covers about 70 per cent of the park. The other two are human: the old town of San Cristóbal de La Laguna (1999) and the cultural landscape of Risco Caído and the Sacred Mountains of Gran Canaria (2019).
The volcano
Teide National Park holds the Teide–Pico Viejo stratovolcano, the highest peak in Spain, which UNESCO regards as the world’s third-tallest volcanic structure; the light and the “sea of clouds” below it change the colours of the landscape through the day. The park climbs from Canary pine forest at about 1,600 metres to the summit, and in late spring the red tajinaste flowers among the lava (MITECO).
Forest and cave temples
On La Gomera, the springs and streams of Garajonay keep alive a laurel forest that UNESCO likens to the vegetation of the Tertiary, long gone from southern Europe. In the mountains of Gran Canaria, Risco Caído keeps cave dwellings, granaries and cisterns of the island’s pre-Hispanic people, and two sacred temples, Risco Caído and Roque Bentayga.
Photo Credit
Image courtesy of © H. Zell · CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia CommonsManrique’s island
On Lanzarote, the artist César Manrique shaped the island’s great sights from the lava itself: the Jardín de Cactus, where the first plant went in on 18 January 1989, and the Centres of Art, Culture and Tourism that include Jameos del Agua, the Cueva de los Verdes, the Mirador del Río and the Montañas del Fuego in Timanfaya.
Go up Teide early in the morning, when the air is clearest, and take a layer: it is cold at the top in every season.
Our advice: on Lanzarote, buy a combined CACT ticket and see two centres a day, one in the morning and one after lunch.
Why it's on our list
- The volcano
- Forest and cave temples
- Manrique’s island
Location
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More in depth
History & heritageThe Canary Islands: from the cave temples to Manrique’s lavaFrom the cave temples of Risco Caído to the grid of La Laguna, the sugar estates and wineries, the literary societies and theatres of the nineteenth century and César Manrique’s twentieth-century Lanzarote: the islands’ heritage, told plainly.
The back storyFrom Manrique’s lava to the Phantom at the Auditorio: Arts & Culture in the CanariesThe Fundación César Manrique and his house at Haría, the MIAC in the Castillo de San José, CAAM’s exhibitions in Las Palmas, the Auditorio de Tenerife, the Auditorio Alfredo Kraus and the Teatro Pérez Galdós, and the sand nativity of Las Canteras: the arts of the Canary Islands.
The back storyWild Canaries: Pilot Whales, the Blue Chaffinch of Teide and the Blind Crabs of JameosResident pilot whales and bottlenose dolphins off Tenerife, the blue chaffinch and the lizards of Teide, the laurel forest of Garajonay and the blind crabs of Jameos del Agua: the wild side of the Canary Islands.