San Cristobal de La Laguna

La Laguna was laid out around 1500 as an unwalled town on a regular grid, an idea that travelled with Spanish planners to the Americas and shaped dozens of colonial cities there. That plan is still legible: long straight streets of low pastel houses with carved wooden balconies, heavy doors and cool interior patios, most of them planted. The cathedral and the older Concepcion church anchor either end, and the tower of the latter is climbable for a view over the tiled roofs. This is a university town, so the bars stay busy on term-time evenings. At around five hundred metres it catches cloud, and is often damp when the coast is bright.

History

The land belonged to Anaga, one of the nine Guanche kingdoms of Tenerife, and the valley of Aguere with its large lake was a place of pilgrimage for the island's aboriginal people. After the Battle of Aguere in 1494, Alonso Fernández de Lugo founded the town in 1496-1497 as the Villa de San Cristóbal de La Gran Laguna, after the lake, and it became the capital of Tenerife and later of all the Canary Islands, its street plan a model for Spanish colonial cities in the Americas. Plague killed between 5,000 and 9,000 people in 1582, the university was founded in 1701, the capital moved to Santa Cruz in 1723 as the town declined, and on 2 December 1999 its historic centre became a World Heritage Site (Wikipedia, San Cristóbal de La Laguna).

Highlights

• The grid streets - the original unwalled plan, still followed line for line.
• Carved wooden balconies - Canarian pine balconies and shuttered upper floors.
• Interior patios - planted courtyards behind the street doors, some open to visitors.
• The Concepcion tower - a climb for the view over roofs to the mountains.

When to go

Any month works, since the Canaries have no real winter, but bring a layer: La Laguna is regularly ten degrees cooler and wetter than the southern resorts. Mornings are clearest before the cloud rolls up the slope. Corpus Christi in early summer brings sand and flower carpets laid across the streets.

Practical notes

Many of the patios are private and shut, so what you see depends on luck. The grid can feel repetitive after an hour, and the weather is genuinely grey and drizzly much of the time while the coast bakes. Sights close at midday and much of Sunday, and most visitors give it two hours between airport and beach, which is about right.

Nearby

The Anaga laurel forest ridge, Santa Cruz de Tenerife and the north coast beaches.

Key facts