The Largest Collection of Guanche Mummies in a Former Hospital

In the heart of Santa Cruz, the Museo de la Naturaleza y Arqueología dwells inside the old Civil Hospital. This grand structure stands as a monument of neoclassical design upon the Canary Islands. It serves as the Natural Library of the Canary Islands, a vault where the secrets of the earth, the flora, and the creatures of the sea and land are kept under glass.

Since the year 1958, these halls have guarded the greatest collection of the Guanche people. One may walk through galleries where the rituals of death are laid bare, witnessing the skeletal remains and mummified bodies of the Guanches. Here, the treasures of the royal tombs of the Menceyes are revealed, resting beside the Zanata Stone with its Berber-Punic script and the humble ceramics of a lost age.

The ghosts of the prehistoric world linger here also. The bones of the Tenerife Gallotia, the Tenerife Giant Rat Canariomys, and the Tenerife Geochelone sit in heavy silence. They share their space with the jagged teeth of the megalodon and the trilobites of a buried world.

Seekers of history may enter this house to face the Mummy of San Andrés. It remains a marvel of preservation, a lingering shadow of a people long vanished from the sun.

Sources: Wikipedia, OpenStreetMap, Wikidata, Wikimedia Commons