"César Manrique" Maritime Park

Santa Cruz de Tenerife · Category: Leisure · Subcategory: Green spaces · Year: 1995 · Authors: César Manrique

The César Manrique Maritime Park is a 22,000 square metre complex dedicated to leisure and enjoyment for citizens. It offers large swimming pools, extensive solariums, changing rooms, showers, jacuzzi, sun loungers and parasols, and various facilities for both tourist or leisure activities and event celebrations.

It is located at the southern end of the city, by the sea, on land that once housed industrial facilities and a municipal landfill, which after proper conditioning were ready for their new use. 

In 1991, the project for the maritime park was commissioned to the team composed of the artist César Manrique (author of the general design) and engineers Juan A. Amigó and José Luis Olcina.

Wood and stone are the predominant materials throughout the site, which is walled and has guardhouses on the outside, in order to conform to the architectural lines of the neighbouring Castillo Negro or San Juan Castle. Inside, the large pools, the extensive solarium, terraces, gardens, waterfall and restaurant stand out, as well as an octagonal kiosk. 

It also features a mural known as Fauna Atlántica , made of mosaics in vivid colours and bordered by black stones. Above the lava covering the seawater conduit to the pool, there is a moving sculpture consisting of an axis with a series of hexagonal plates, arranged in five levels, which move when stirred by the wind.

Work on the park began in 1993, opening two years later. It bears the name of César Manrique, the artist who could not see his design completed due to his tragic death in a traffic accident in 1992.

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