History & heritage
The Canary Islands: from the cave temples to Manrique’s lava
From 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.
Photo Credit
Image courtesy of © Thomas Wolf, www.foto-tw.de · CC BY-SA 3.0 de via Wikimedia CommonsThe history of the Canary Islands is written in their landscapes: the cave dwellings and sacred mountains of the first islanders, the town plans and churches that followed the settlers of the fifteenth century, the plantations and vineyards of the next three hundred years, and an artist who taught an island to build with its lava.
At a glance
UNESCO World Heritage: Garajonay National Park (1986), San Cristóbal de La Laguna (1999), Teide National Park (2007), Risco Caído and the Sacred Mountains of Gran Canaria (2019).
The first islanders
In the mountains of Gran Canaria, cave dwellings, granaries and cisterns record a pre-Hispanic culture that evolved in isolation from the arrival of North African Berbers, around the beginning of our era, until the first Spanish settlers in the fifteenth century. Its two sacred temples, Risco Caído and Roque Bentayga, are thought to be linked to a cult of the stars and Mother Earth (UNESCO).
An ideal city
San Cristóbal de La Laguna, on Tenerife, has two nuclei: the original, unplanned Upper Town and the Lower Town, the first ideal “city-territory” laid out according to philosophical principles, with wide streets and open spaces lined with churches and houses of the sixteenth to the eighteenth century (UNESCO).
Sugar and wine
On La Palma, Hotel Hacienda de Abajo occupies a former seventeenth-century sugar plantation in Tazacorte. The Monje family have made wine on Tenerife since 1750, in their own words, and on Lanzarote El Grifo has made wine since 1775. On the harbour of Arrecife, the Castillo de San José was built in the eighteenth century for defence (CACT).
Societies and theatres
In Las Palmas, the Gabinete Literario was founded on 1 March 1844 as a cultural society; in Santa Cruz de Tenerife, the Teatro Guimerá opened in January 1851, the oldest theatre in the archipelago, named after the writer Ángel Guimerá, born in the city in 1845 (their sites).
A culture that evolved in isolation, from the arrival of North African Berbers until the fifteenth century.
Manrique’s island
In the twentieth century the artist César Manrique reshaped Lanzarote with its own lava. Jameos del Agua, in the La Corona volcanic tube, was the first of the centres he created; the Castillo de San José has housed the International Museum of Contemporary Art since 1976, and the first plant of his Jardín de Cactus went into the ground on 18 January 1989. Bar Picasso in Arrecife, opened in 1974, became a meeting place for the island’s cultural life (CACT; Fundación César Manrique).
On UNESCO’s lists
Today the islands hold four World Heritage sites, and El Hierro, the youngest island, has been a Biosphere Reserve since 2000 and a Geopark since 2014 (UNESCO; El Hierro tourism).
Our advice: see the history in order: Risco Caído’s cave temples, then a morning in La Laguna, then a day among Manrique’s centres on Lanzarote.
Why it's on our list
- The first islanders
- An ideal city
- Sugar and wine
- Societies and theatres
- Manrique’s island
- On UNESCO’s lists
Location
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More in depth
The back storySeven islands, four World Heritage sites: reading the Canaries’ great sightsTeide 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.
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.