La Laguna, A World Heritage

A wonderful walk backwards in time among its streets loaded with history.

San Cristobal de La Laguna has a universal and exceptional value through the layout of its plan. This historic residential complex is the archetype of the city state. It is the first example of a non fortified city, conceived and built according to a plan inspired in navigation, the science of the day. Its space is organized according to a new peaceful, social order, inspired by the religious doctrine of the millennium starting in the year 1500.

The plan of the city reads like a “stellar map”, in which the points correspond with specific point of the city and the relationships between certain of these points and as a whole. It has a symbolic meaning and is interpreted as a marine chart or a map of the constellations of the era.

All of this takes us to December second of 1999, when the World Heritage Committee of the U.N.E.S.C.O., gathered in Marrakech (Morocco) made public their approval of the City of San Cristobal de La Laguna, Tenerife, as World Heritage. The World Heritage Committee justifies that decision fundamentally based on the following criteria:

• La Laguna is a historical complex, archetype of the ”city-territory,” a first example of a non fortified colonial city, and a direct precedent of the new American foundations.
• It was laid out starting from a complex project, based on philosophical principles, executed thanks to the knowledge of navigation, the science of the time.
• Its original layout, of year 1500, has remained intact since it was created.
• There are over 600 buildings of mudejar architecture are still in good shape.
• La Laguna is a living example of the exchange of influences between the European culture and the American culture with whom it has kept a continuous link.

This worldwide distinction to the values of La Laguna, which recognizes it as the ideal city, a city of peace, a reward not only because of the efforts made during the last nineteen years by the different administrations who have sponsored the project, but as a recognition to all of its inhabitants that during these five hundred have cherished and cared for this city.