The Most Beautiful Places in Santa Cruz de Tenerife
12 places · updated 14 October 2026
In short: By our ranking, the most beautiful places in Santa Cruz de Tenerife are Teide, Roque de los Muchachos Observatory and Auditorio de Tenerife. The list covers 12 places. Last updated 14 October 2026.
The province of Santa Cruz de Tenerife covers the western Canary Islands, Tenerife, La Palma, La Gomera and El Hierro, all of them volcanic peaks rising from the deep Atlantic off Africa. The islands are geologically young, and their steep relief catches the trade winds, so damp laurel forests grow on the northern slopes while the southern coasts stay dry. On the highest summits, the air above the clouds is so clear and stable that it draws astronomers from across the world.
Teide, on Tenerife, is the highest point in Spain and the centrepiece of a national park of lava fields and coloured rock around a vast caldera. On La Palma, the Roque de los Muchachos Observatory sits on the rim of the Caldera de Taburiente, its telescopes among the most important in the Northern Hemisphere. In the town of Icod de los Vinos, the Icod Dragon Tree is the oldest and largest known specimen of the Canary Islands dragon tree, a species that grows only in this region.
The island coasts are as dramatic as the peaks. The Acantilados de Los Gigantes on Tenerife's western shore drop several hundred metres straight into the ocean, and nearby the Masca Gorge winds from a hamlet in the Teno mountains down to a small beach on the sea. Together they show how volcanic islands are built up by eruptions and then cut away by water and waves.
In this list
| # | Place | Type | UNESCO |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Teide | Volcano | |
| 2 | Roque de los Muchachos Observatory | Observatory | |
| 3 | Auditorio de Tenerife | Opera house | |
| 4 | Icod Dragon Tree | Remarkable tree | |
| 5 | La Gomera | Island | |
| 6 | Teide National Park | National park | ✓ |
| 7 | Acantilados de Los Gigantes | Cliff | |
| 8 | Garajonay National Park | National park | ✓ |
| 9 | La Palma | Island | |
| 10 | Caldera de Taburiente National Park | National park | |
| 11 | Siam Park | Water park | |
| 12 | Masca Gorge | Canyon |
01 Teide
Spain28.273° N 16.644° W
Image by javierAlamo from Pixabay Teide, 3,715 m, is the highest point in Spain and the highest summit of any island in the Atlantic. Measured from the ocean floor it stands some 7,500 m tall, making it the third-largest volcanic structure on Earth after Mauna Loa and Mauna Kea in Hawaii.
Did you know? The endemic Teide bugloss produces pyramids of red flowers up to 3 m tall, blooming in late spring on the caldera floor.
02 Roque de los Muchachos Observatory
Observatorio del Roque de los Muchachos
Spain28.764° N 17.895° W
H. Zell · CC BY-SA 3.0 The Roque de los Muchachos Observatory occupies the summit ridge of La Palma, the north-westernmost of the Canary Islands, at around 2,400 metres above the Atlantic.
Did you know? The project goes back to 1969, when work on a Northern Hemisphere Observatory began, and took some fifteen years of international cooperation.
03 Auditorio de Tenerife
Spain · 1.5 km from Santa Cruz de Tenerife28.456° N 16.251° W
Wladyslaw , derivative work: Nikopol · CC BY-SA 3.0 Santiago Calatrava's Auditorio de Tenerife rises on the waterfront of Santa Cruz like a breaking wave or a sail caught in the wind.
Did you know? The building appeared on a Spanish postage stamp in 2008 and on a commemorative 5-euro coin in 2011.
04 Icod Dragon Tree
Spain28.367° N 16.722° W
H. Zell · CC BY-SA 3.0 Dragon trees look like something from another geological age. Dracaena draco is native to the Canary Islands, where it has become a living emblem of the archipelago. The most famous individual of the species stands in Icod de los Vinos on the north coast of Tenerife.
Did you know? A ventilation system was fitted inside the hollow trunk in 1985 to stop fungi from rotting the tree from within.
05 La Gomera
Spain28.115° N 17.225° W
Image by guayota from Pixabay La Gomera, one of the smaller Canary Islands, is roughly round and about 22 km across, yet it rises to 1,487 metres at Alto de Garajonay. Its shape has been compared to half an orange split into segments: deep ravines, the barrancos, radiate from the central plateau to the sea, with steep ridges between them.
06 Teide National Park
Parque Nacional del Teide
Spain28.276° N 16.643° W
- UNESCO World Heritage
- UNESCO natural beauty
Image by Barni1 from Pixabay Teide National Park covers the high heart of Tenerife: a vast volcanic caldera, Las Cañadas, and the cone of Teide rising out of it to 3,718 metres, the highest point in Spain.
07 Acantilados de Los Gigantes
Spain28.297° N 16.856° W
Image by marcelkessler from Pixabay Along the western coast of Tenerife, dark basalt walls drop straight into the Atlantic from heights of roughly 300 to more than 600 metres. The Acantilados de Los Gigantes, the Cliffs of the Giants, are the product of the sea eating into old volcanic rock, at the seaward edge of the Teno massif.
Did you know? Southwest Tenerife hosts a resident population of short-finned pilot whales, estimated by one study at about 636 animals in 2007–2009.
08 Garajonay National Park
Parque nacional de Garajonay
Spain28.126° N 17.237° W
- UNESCO World Heritage
- UNESCO natural beauty
Image by nike159 from Pixabay Garajonay, spread across the high centre of La Gomera in the Canary Islands, protects the finest surviving example of laurisilva — the humid laurel forest that covered much of southern Europe millions of years ago and now survives only on a handful of Atlantic islands.
09 La Palma
Spain28.660° N 17.860° W
Image by b_gofron from Pixabay The north-westernmost of the Canary Islands rises out of the Atlantic as a single steep volcanic mass. From the shore the land climbs to 2,426 metres at the Roque de los Muchachos, and the whole volcanic edifice stands almost seven kilometres above the ocean floor.
Did you know? The 2021 eruption on the Cumbre Vieja ridge lasted 85 days, the longest on the island since records began.
10 Caldera de Taburiente National Park
Parque nacional de la Caldera de Taburiente
Spain28.754° N 17.885° W
Luc Viatour · CC BY-SA 3.0 The northern half of La Palma is hollowed out by an immense amphitheatre of rock.
Did you know? The name Taburiente comes from the language of the island's original inhabitants and is said to mean a plain or level ground.
11 Siam Park
Spain28.072° N 16.727° W
Mataparda · Public domain Siam Park is a water park in Costa Adeje, in the south of Tenerife, built around a Thai theme. It belongs to the Loro Parque group run by the Kiessling family, and was designed by Christoph Kiessling.
Did you know? The wave machine of the Wave Palace was built by Murphys Waves, a specialist company based in Scotland.
12 Masca Gorge
Barranco de Masca
Spain28.295° N 16.851° W
Image by Thunderstorm from Pixabay From a cluster of houses perched on a ridge among palms, a narrow cleft drops through dark volcanic rock all the way to the Atlantic: Masca Gorge cuts through the Teno massif in the north-western corner of Tenerife, a world of sheer walls, tight bends and layered basalt far removed from the island's resort coasts.
Did you know? A land snail found nowhere else, Hemicycla mascaensis, is named after the village.
How this list is ranked
Places are chosen for how they look, not for how famous they are: each one has its own description and a photograph credited to its author. The order is a single world ranking that weighs the beauty of the place in curated photography together with how widely it is documented — the number of language editions of its encyclopedia article and how often that article is read in a year. The list is rebuilt as places are added, so the order and the counts on this page are always current.
Questions people ask
- What are the most beautiful places in Santa Cruz de Tenerife?
- On our list, Teide ranks first, followed by Roque de los Muchachos Observatory and Auditorio de Tenerife.
- How high is Mount Teide?
- Teide rises to 3,715 metres above sea level, making it the highest point in Spain. Measured from its base on the ocean floor, the volcano is far taller still.
- Why are there observatories on La Palma?
- The summit of La Palma rises above the cloud layer created by the trade winds, giving clear, dry and stable air, and the island protects its night sky by law. This makes the Roque de los Muchachos one of the best sites for astronomy in the world.
- What kinds of places are there to see in Santa Cruz de Tenerife?
- In our collection, the places in Santa Cruz de Tenerife are most often national parks (3), islands (2), nature sanctuaries (2) and mountains (1).
- How many places are on this list in Santa Cruz de Tenerife?
- The list covers 12 places.