Get to know an unparalleled heritage

This historic-artistic enclave continues to preserve its traditional architecture, where we can also enjoy the view of the Conventual Church of San Francisco located in the square with the same name, and whose interior houses numerous pieces of baroque-style art and engineering of various styles, highlighting a beautiful Christ of the Agony, a work of Sevillian origin, brought to this city at the dawn of the 17th century, and a small carving that represents Saint Francis of Assisi.

Throughout the entire neighborhood you can see a series of large wooden crosses on some facades of the old houses, and which the Catholic world calls Via Crucis, these crosses represent the stations of the Via Crucis that the Franciscans who They lived together in the Barrio de San Francisco.

We can also enjoy secluded, intimate, small and coquettish squares such as that of the Fountain, the convent, the Romeros and the Bonito Tree.

The alameda and the square were separated in the past, but today they make up a single scenic space surrounded by stately buildings dating from the 19th and early 20th centuries. One of them corresponds to the Town Hall and another is the Casino La Unión. The others belonged to wealthy families in their day and most of them today house municipal offices.

The Church or minor basilica of San Juan Bautista, declared an Asset of Cultural Interest and National Historic-Artistic Monument on June 21, 1991, is one of the oldest in the Canary Islands. For this reason, it is one of the best examples of the influence of Andalusian and Portuguese Mudejar art on the Islands. Its origin can be found at the end of the 15th century, in a small hermitage of stone and mud built next to the fort of San Juan.

Work on the new temple began around 1519 and continued during the 17th and 18th centuries. It is a building with three naves with a rectangular presbytery, flanked by chapels, heads of the lateral naves.

Its main portal stands out on the outside. The two towers of the 20th century. In its interior it conserves a varied sample of interesting works of art, among which the altarpiece of the main altar and the triptych stand out, both Flemish and of Gothic invoice; as well as the Christ of the main altar, a sculpture made with millo (corn) paste by the Tarascan Indians of Michoacán, in Mexico, and which arrived in Telde in 1550.

Plaza de San Juan

Among the group of buildings located to the right of the square, as you leave the temple, is that of the Town Hall. It is distinguished by the flags on its balcony. It has an exhibition hall on its ground floor and the City's information and tourism center, where works by local artists are usually displayed, with a neoclassical interior patio, a typical element in traditional Canarian houses. Next to the Town Halls, the Casino building lends itself to a snack before continuing on the route. From the Casino we can go to Rincón de Plácido Fleitas, an old garden transformed into a monument to one of the local artists. And from El Rincón I advise you to head towards Calle Duende, to enter the Santa Rosalía garden, where its traditional use coexists with that of a children's playground.

Calles de San Juan

Leaving the Santa Rosalía garden, we enter directly onto the pedestrian street Licenciado Calderín, where several centuries of architecture coexist in modern buildings from the last half of the 20th century and houses that date back even to the 17th century. If you walk to the end of the street, you will find the Public Library, in the Quintana-Zumbado house, from the end of the 17th century.

To the left of Licenciado Calderín street, through Placetilla, to take Conde de la Vega Grande street, so called because it is home to the well-known Casa Condal, former Casa de los Ruiz de Vergara, a building dating from the 16th century and that belonged to the family of the Condado de la Vega Grande de Guadalupe. Today it is the headquarters of the Municipal School of Crafts and Folklore and soon an ethnographic museum. Sober on the outside, with a main door that tells us about the importance of the building. It shows a Manueline-type arch with the family's coat of arms placed on it.

Continue your walk to the end of the street and head to the right, until you reach the main street, Juan Carlos I. You will see the Church of San Pedro Mártir de Verona.

Iglesia San Pedro Martir de Verona

The church of San Pedro Mártir de Verona was declared a Site of Cultural Interest in 1981. This site has a history behind it that dates back to the end of the 15th century. Inés Chemida, an aboriginal woman who cared for poor patients, founded the San Pedro Mártir hospital in this place in 1490. Later the church would be built, which was completed in 1551. Withdrawn from worship in the mid-19th century, it remained in a state of ruin for almost a century and its restoration was completed in 2001. Today it is one of the exhibition halls of the Town Hall It is a building with a single nave and two lateral chapels opened by means of pointed arches. The one on the right was built in the 16th century and is of Gothic style. The one on the left is later, from the second half of the 17th century, and is covered by an octagonal coffered ceiling, similar to the original.

Outside, from the square that surrounds the building, you can see part of the neighborhoods of San Francisco and Cendro, as well as the old access to the city through the bridge of the seven eyes, built on the Barranco Real de Telde in 1868 by the engineer Juan de León y Castillo.

I recommend that you return to Calle Juan Carlos I. When you reach Plaza de San Juan, you will find Calle Inés Chemida on your right. From it we can see a part of the San Francisco neighborhood, known as the Bailadero.

Casa Museo de León y Castillo

At numbers 43 and 45 we find the León y Castillo House Museum, where the politician Fernando and his brother Juan were born, architect of a multitude of infrastructures on the Island, including the Port. The Museum today includes two houses, the original one of the León y Castillo family and another in which the poet Montiano Placeres lived. Its rooms offer a journey through the political history of Spain in the second half of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th. In addition, the houses are two magnificent examples of traditional Canarian architecture, with their interior patios and the wooden corridors on the upper floors that lead to them.