Castillo de la Luz

The Castillo de la Luz is a fortress formerly situated by the sea in the north of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria in the Canary Islands. At the beginning of 2014 it was reopened after years of renovation as a maritime museum and exhibition venue for art.

The quadrangular building with massive walls was erected in 1541 on the remains of the fortress walls of a destroyed castle from the time of the conquest. It was built mainly for protection against pirates and was equipped with eleven cannons. For centuries, when it still lay by the sea, it formed an important defensive installation against attacks from the seaward side. Thus Francis Drake did not succeed in taking the fortress with an English fleet in 1595, but the Dutchman Pieter van der Does did in 1599, and he plundered and burned it down. From 1601 it was restored. In the 19th century military use was abandoned.

Through land reclamation the building no longer has contact with the sea. It has been a listed monument since 1941. Since the completion of a first restoration (1969–1972) it housed a maritime museum and further exhibition rooms. Cultural events were also held there. In 1990 the fortress was restored. After the architectural office Nieto Sobejano Arquitectos won the competition for a redesign of the building in 1998, conversion work began in 2001, so that the interior could not be visited for years. The conversion, originally planned to last two years, cost about 6.6 million euros and was repeatedly delayed, by archaeological finds, the bankruptcy of the construction firm in 2007 and vandalism in 2011.

On 28 January 2014 the castle was reopened by the crown prince and princess as a maritime museum and exhibition venue for art after 13 years of refurbishment. From June 2014 works by the artist Martín Chirino, born in Las Palmas, have also been exhibited there.

Machine-translated from “Castillo de la Luz” on the German Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Castillo de la Luz ranks #5,282 of 8,133 worldwide in the atlas's castle fame ranking, and #243 of the 603 mapped in Spain. Founded 1541, it is older than 42% of the atlas's dated landmarks — one of 755 atlas entries founded in the 16th century. 1 more atlas landmarks stand within 25 km. See how Spain compares in the castle statistics.

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Read the full history on Wikipedia (in German) ↗