Church Square

Santa Cruz de Tenerife · Category: Architecture · Subcategory: Squares, streets & markets · Year: Siglo XVI

This enclosure located next to the Iglesia de la Concepción was not originally conceived as a square, but rather as a fairly wide street through which the first road linking Santa Cruz with La Laguna and the interior of the island ran. For that reason it was known as Calle Grande or Ancha, and for a long time it was, together with the nearby streets of Las Norias and La Candelaria, the original nucleus of the settlement.

Here lived some of the most prominent merchants and landowners of the place during the 17th and 18th centuries. In one of the houses (now disappeared) of this square resided Bishop Bartolomé García Ximénez, when in 1665 he settled in Santa Cruz.  Other important figures who lived here were the Logman brothers, priests and great benefactors of the place, whose house later passed to the Bignoni family and later became a hotel. Also Domingo Chirino Soler, Marquis of the Fuente de Las Palmas; the Casalón family, whose house (number 8, still preserved today) served as the French Consulate and later became the City Hall headquarters between 1826 and 1837; Diego Meade, British consular agent; and finally, the former mayor of the town Matías Rodríguez Carta, in a building still standing and known as Casa de Carta, one of the most representative of the entire complex.

Plaza de la Iglesia underwent a profound modification when Avenida Bravo Murillo was opened, removing an entire block of old buildings that were located on the side facing the sea. During the 1980s and 1990s the whole space was rehabilitated with the continuity of pavements that were naturally adapted to the oldest elements of its landscape: church, enclosed garden where the marble Cross and the bust of the priest Luis María de Eguiraun are located, as well as the magnificent trees and street lamps.

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