Tenerife Museums & galleries

The island's most important collection covers the people who were here first. The Guanches, the indigenous Canarians, lived on Tenerife for something like two thousand years before the Castilian conquest ended in 1496, and Santa Cruz holds the archaeology, the pottery and the mummies that came out of the burial caves.

Around that sits a wider range than an island this size would suggest: a serious contemporary art centre in the capital, a science and cosmos museum aimed squarely at children, the history and anthropology museum in a La Laguna palace, and small municipal collections in the northern towns. Most are cheap and several are free on certain days.