Timanfaya National Park — national park
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Timanfaya National Park

Parque Nacional de Timanfaya

  • Elevation103 m
  • 2 min read
  • 29.014° N 13.780° W

Interesting facts

  • The eruptions that created much of Timanfaya lasted from September 1730 to April 1736.
  • A later, much shorter eruption on Lanzarote took place in 1824.
  • Timanfaya is the only national park in Spain that is entirely geological in character.
  • The park covers about 51 square kilometres and was declared in 1974.
  • Underground temperatures at the Islote de Hilario are high enough to turn poured water instantly into steam.
  • César Manrique designed the park's devil emblem and the El Diablo restaurant, which grills food over volcanic heat.
  • Yaiza's parish priest Andrés Lorenzo Curbelo left an eyewitness account of the first stage of the eruption.

Why it is worth it

On the night of 1 September 1730 the ground opened in the south-west of Lanzarote, and it did not settle again for almost six years. The eruptions that followed, among the longest and largest ever witnessed in the Canary Islands, poured lava and ash over a fertile farming district, buried villages and reshaped a large part of the island before they died away in April 1736. A short new eruption followed in 1824. Timanfaya National Park protects the heart of that landscape: about 51 square kilometres of cones, craters, lava fields and ash plains, the only national park in Spain whose interest is entirely geological.

Much of what is known about the first months comes from the parish priest of Yaiza, Andrés Lorenzo Curbelo, whose account describes a mountain rising out of the earth in a single night and rivers of fire running down to the sea, while the inhabitants fled and returned and fled again. Today the area is still called the Montañas del Fuego, the Fire Mountains, and the name is not just poetry. Just beneath the surface the ground is still remarkably hot, and some 13 metres down temperatures reach several hundred degrees; at the Islote de Hilario, water poured into a shaft bursts back out as a column of steam within seconds.

The colours are what stay in the memory: rust-red and ochre cones, black and purple lava fields twisted into ropes and blades, and pale lichens, the first life to take hold, slowly colonising the bare rock. The Lanzarote-born artist César Manrique left his mark here too. He designed the El Diablo restaurant on the Islote de Hilario, where food is grilled over the volcanic heat, and the devil figure that became the park's emblem. The park was declared in 1974, and since 1993 it has been a core area of the UNESCO biosphere reserve that covers the whole of Lanzarote.

Getting there

The park lies in the municipalities of Yaiza and Tinajo; the village of Yaiza is about 6.5 km from its centre. César Manrique-Lanzarote Airport (ACE), near the island's capital Arrecife, is about 19 km away. Lanzarote has no railway; ferries link the island with Fuerteventura from Playa Blanca and with Gran Canaria, Tenerife and the Spanish mainland from Arrecife.

Plan your visit

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Nearby places

On these lists

The Most Beautiful Places in Las Palmas 12The Most Beautiful Places in the Canary Islands 24The Most Beautiful Places in Spain 150The Most Beautiful National Parks in Spain 7The Most Beautiful Film Locations in the Canary Islands 7The Most Beautiful Gardens, Parks and Forests in the Canary Islands 8The Most Beautiful Nature Sanctuaries in Spain 9The Most Beautiful National Parks Seen on Screen 10The Most Beautiful Film Locations in Spain 14The Most Beautiful Nature Sanctuaries Seen on Screen 14The Most Beautiful Gardens, Parks and Forests in Spain 19The Most Beautiful Gardens, Parks and Forests Seen on Screen 22The Most Beautiful National Parks 61The Most Beautiful Nature Sanctuaries 91The Most Beautiful Film Locations 221The Most Beautiful Gardens, Parks and Forests 232

From the encyclopaedia

Timanfaya National Park is a Spanish national park in the southwestern part of the island of Lanzarote, in the Canary Islands. It covers parts of the municipalities Tinajo and Yaiza. The area is 51.07 square kilometres (19.72 sq mi), entirely made up of volcanic soil. It is the only National Park in Spain which is entirely geological. The statue El Diablo of César Manrique is its symbol. Timanfaya National Park represents a sign of recent and historical volcanism in the Macaronesian region. The last volcanic eruptions occurred in 1824; however, most of the area covered by the national park was transformed by the eruptive period from 1730 to 1736.

Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

29.01410, -13.78000per Wikidata