Hermitage of the Holy Cross

Santa Cruz de Tenerife · Category: Memory · Subcategory: Sites of memory · Year: 1745

In the El Cabo neighbourhood there was this hermitage about which we know very little. It was founded and built in 1745 by the governor Juan Agustín de Arauz y Lordelo with the purpose, apparently, of sheltering the Foundational Cross installed there in the open air.

The new hermitage also housed an image of Our Lady of Sorrows and was placed under the invocation of the Holy Shroud. Its characteristics were typical of this type of construction: a single rectangular floor, wooden ceiling in the Mudejar style covered with tiles, and a doorway with a semicircular arch, with a bell gable on the corner.

It seems that the hermitage was active for barely four decades, as we know it was definitively closed due to abandonment on 22 May 1794. The Cross was then kept in the hermitage of San Telmo, later in the chapel of the Hospital, and finally in the main church of the Conception.

28.462874, -16.250079