For the many people who choose to fly to tenerife, visitors are guaranteed sun, escape and relaxation. Puerto De la Cruz however, is an overlooked location by tourists as many tend to visit south, rather than the north coast where this destination is based. The casino sitting inside has become one of the most visually appealing leisure complexes that Europe has to offer, but unfortunately, not many outside the island even know it exists.
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César Manrique Built It, Which Explains Everything
Lago Martiánez opened in 1977, a location of saltwater pools, floating islands, rich geological history from volcanic activity, and all of it designed by César Manrique. If you’ve spent any time in the Canary Islands you’ll have encountered his work without necessarily knowing it: he’s the Lanzarote artist who spent decades making sure the islands didn’t ruin themselves with ugly development, and his buildings have a specific quality where they look less constructed than grown, like the volcanic rock just arranged itself into something habitable and he signed off on it.
The casino sits on the central island of the complex, the Sala Andrómeda. You walk through Manrique’s pools and past his sculptures to get there, which is not the approach most casinos offer. Inside you’ll find table games, roulette and slots alongside that completely non-standard setting. If you want to get a feel for the slots side of things before you go, BoyleSports runs a slots platform with the same kind of games you’d find on the casino floor, accessible from wherever you’re staying before you make the trip across town.
Lago Martiánez itself is worth knowing about separately from the casino. The pools are filled with Atlantic seawater pumped in through high-pressure pipes, six hours to fill each one. Floating islands. Sculptures coming out of the water. Teide behind it on clear days, open ocean in front on all days. In 2005 the whole complex was declared a Historic Garden, a designation that feels both right and slightly insufficient. By 2008 it had passed 26 million visitors. It opens for swimming during the day and the casino takes over in the evenings, which gives the whole place a different atmosphere after dark, the volcanic rock and the water lit up with the Atlantic doing what it does just outside.
A Hotel That Couldn’t Decide What It Wanted to Be
The casino didn’t always live here. Start with the Gran Hotel Taoro, because you have to. French architect Adolphe Coquet built it in 1890 on a hill above the town, four towers, a French garden, capacity for 250 guests and a carriage service down to the seafront. It was the first luxury hotel in Spain. Kaiser Wilhelm II stayed there in 1909. Agatha Christie came in 1929. Alfonso XIII. Konrad Adenauer. The kind of guest list that makes a hotel feel inevitable, like it was always going to exist and those people were always going to end up inside it.
Then the twentieth century happened. Two world wars, a Great Depression, a fire in 1929 that took out the west wing, and the gradual realisation by the 1970s that European tourists arriving in Tenerife wanted modern resorts rather than a Victorian hilltop hotel with four towers. HUSA walked away from it in 1975 after decades of trying to make it work. For a few years the building just sat there. Then someone had the idea of turning it into a casino, which it became in 1979, and which it stayed until 2006 when the tables moved out to Lago Martiánez and the Taoro went dark again.
It’s been through a €35 million restoration since then and reopened recently as a five-star hotel, 199 rooms, the Atlantic on one side and Teide on the other. Worth a look if you’re staying in Puerto de la Cruz. The casino though is where it belongs now, on Manrique’s central island, lit up at night with the sea just beyond it.
Planning a Visit
It opens evenings after the pools close for the day, so you get the complex in its night mode, which changes things considerably compared to the beach crowd during daylight hours. If you’re coming from the south of the island it’s about an hour’s drive and worth doing once if only for the architecture. The casino itself is a casino, no more or less, but the setting is unlike anything comparable in Europe and that counts for something.
