The Lake That Left Its Name Behind
The water is missing from La Laguna. The town took its name from a shallow lagoon beside the old settlement. Its older name, Aguere, means lagoon too, according to the city: a town named twice after water it no longer has.
It was not necessarily the lake a visitor might picture from the name. Historical accounts described water that dried out in summer, with the ground taking on the character of marshland. The lagoon was eventually drained; the streets kept the name after the water had gone. The town is still called the City of Aguere.
Where a Town Starts Drawing Straight Lines
Stand in the Upper Town, near the area where the lagoon lay, and the streets do not announce a tidy geometrical plan. This was the original settlement, laid out without the deliberate grid that appears farther east.
In the Lower Town, roads meet in a pattern intended from the outset. The streets are wide, the crossings legible, and the Plaza del Adelantado anchors the planned quarter. UNESCO describes a design shaped by philosophical principles and royal regulations. That is a rather formal pedigree for a junction you can cross without thinking about it.
The Town That Did Not Ask for a Wall
An old town often announces itself with a gate, making an entrance into a small ceremony. La Laguna was planned without enclosing walls. Walk along the Lower Town’s streets and the significant architectural feature may be the barrier that nobody built.
UNESCO says the unfortified grid became a model for many colonial towns in the Americas. That is UNESCO’s judgement, and it concerns the plan, not the houses. The organisation also points to a family resemblance between the town’s civic and religious buildings and those in the Americas.
A plan can travel without a stone being shipped. What began here as a deliberate arrangement of streets and public space could be repeated on another piece of ground.
A Square With a Stone-Faced Neighbour
The Plaza del Adelantado is where the Lower Town’s plan acquires a definite address. Along its edge stands the Palacio de Nava, whose stone front gives the square a splendidly serious expression. Stand facing the palace and look at the entrance. Paired columns frame the doorway, while a balustrade above conceals the tiled roof.
The building began long after the town’s streets were set out, and its exterior was later refaced in stone. The stone front you see belongs to a much later moment than the street beneath your feet.
The detail I like is the hidden roof. From the square you see the dressed stone and the composed façade; the traditional tiles sit behind the parapet. The original plan gave the palace its corner. Later builders decided what that corner should look like.
The Street Plan From the Bell Tower
The stone tower of the Iglesia de la Concepción rises in the Upper Town, close to the settlement that grew beside the lagoon. The church began early in La Laguna’s history; the bell tower came later, and from the streets nearby it is the thing you steer by.
The tower can also be climbed. Look out from above and the streets below stop behaving like separate little discoveries. The change between the older, less regular part of La Laguna and the planned lower quarter becomes a question of lines and crossings. On the ground, a façade interrupts your view. From the tower, the streets carry the eye past it.
I would rather have this view than another decorative explanation of town planning. A straight street drawn on a page can seem obvious. Below the bell tower it has roofs, squares and the space between corners to contend with.
A Cloud Over the Open Town
There is another Tenerife in the island’s north. La Laguna receives more rain and humidity, and less sun, than the southern slopes. Tenerife’s cloudy north is not a failed version of the holiday island. It is the ordinary sky above a town with its own streets and university.
The University of La Laguna belongs to the town’s long life beyond its founding plan. The streets around it have not been kept as a display of an earlier age. UNESCO describes La Laguna as a living town, with buildings of different periods sharing the original layout.
At a crossing in the Lower Town, the road carries on past buildings that arrived after the plan was drawn. Perhaps that is why the drawing could cross the Atlantic: it did not prescribe what every house had to become. It gave the next house somewhere to stand.
