Description: The Cesar Manrique Foundation

We spent a week in Lanzarote last April with our daughter and now ex husband with our granddaughter of four months and during that time we were looking for places of interest that we could visit easily with a young baby. Prior to our visit I had not heard of Lanzarote’s most famous artist Cesar Manrique but during our visit I became quite a fan.
Cesar Manrique felt so strongly about keeping the island of Lanzarote unspoilt by high rise buildings and tourist tacky stuff that he fought the powers that be strongly It is largely thanks to him that Lanzarote has no building higher than a palm tree and that all the houses should be the same colour .The painted wood of the houses however changes on location of the houses.

Now most people are aware of the fact that the Canary Islands are volcanic and that Lanzarote was unfortunate enough to be the place to suffer the world’s longest volcanic eruption. This started in 1730 and lasted six years during which time lava spewed forth from a series of volcanoes and molten rock covered a quarter of the island.
This wonderful artist not only saved Lanzarote from having its beauty spoilt by tourists coming to see the volcanic scenery but he also has created a number of the sites of special interest. He designed the restaurant in Timanfaya National Park and created the amazing amphitheatre in the Jameos del Agua as well as his own beautiful home that I am reviewing now which he gave to the Cesar Manrique Foundation which supports up and coming artists.
The Cesar Manrique Foundation is located in Taro de Tahiche not far from Costa Teguise and is very close to a roundabout with a large windmill also built by Manrique. He began building this unique house in 1968 partly as a way to show that houses could be built in a more eco friendly way in keeping with the landscape surrounding it. He was passionate about the island and his work is inspired by the stark contrasting colours seen on the island .This amazing house was his dream home and as such it is probably the work that best represents Manrique's artistic and personal ideals. After his death in 1992 he left his house to be the headquarters for the foundation and also opened it up to the public.

The house is open daily from Monday to Friday from 10am-6pm then Saturday & Sunday 10am-2pm. Parking is free and the entrance fee like everything on the island was 8 Euros per person.


The house looks like a fairly traditional Spanish house from the entrance and is inspired by the traditional architecture of Lanzarote. There are beautiful heavy wooden doors and shutters, a courtyard garden, with thick walls and North African style chimneys. However once you have entered the actual house and moved on through what was once the living room, you step out onto the balcony and stairs which hang over the sunken garden and from here on you realize that this is a very different house as you look out over the black rock landscape that it is part of.
The main house is built using the natural formation of five volcanic bubbles for the various rooms of the house. After going through the original living room you carefully descend a volcanic stone staircase into the five volcanic chambers. The visitors move through the house in the same direction and even though there were a number of other visitors we found that we could find ourselves in a room by ourselves. I’m not sure what it would be like on a summer’s day as we visited in April prior to the Easter school break so not the busiest of times I suppose.

Each of these living spaces built within the lava bubbles has an individual character. The first bubble has a lovely gentle fountain bubbling in the background and hanging plants coming down the walls and then you go on through a short passage carved or naturally formed in the lava and painted bright white then you reach the first living area or the white room. This room has white furniture, table and white vinyl cushions on a concrete sofa It looked rather like something Elvis would have liked and not too comfortable to sit on either. A lovely palm tree has pride of place along with some beautiful china jars and a rather strange goat’s skull on the wall which is meant to be something inspired by Georgia O’Keeffe.

Next you move into the Red room which has a dead fig tree in the middle and seat cushions of red vinyl and Manrique’s life sized wooden sculpture ‘Man and His Shadow ‘.

As you follow the arrows guiding you through you pass a shower room with the shower nozzle coming straight from the lava walls then you emerge into the garden with its dazzlingly white painted outer and the cool bright turquoise swimming pool. The ‘garden’ is more like a pool surround as there is no grass but there are hanging plants and a lovely seating area near the barbecue there is a winding pathway laid out with large volcanic slabs and a small bridge over the pool. All of this is down in a volcanic hole with light coming through but surrounded by high lava walls.

Following through the house the other bubbles are similarly decorated in 70s style with vinyl, looking cool but not very comfortable in my view.

The next room is upstairs and was Manrique’s studio and is now where the exhibitions of art work can be viewed.

Finally as you come out into the back garden you are immediately drawn to the most amazingly brightly coloured mural made from broken tiles. It is a scene of several bulls but it is the primary clear bright colours that attract you and below the mural are beds of flowers or at least there were when we visited.

By this time baby needed a feed and we needed a coffee so we popped into the small Foundation shop and then bought coffees and cake from the small café. We took these to a cosy seating are in the shade and sat enjoying the view and chatting about this amazing house and gallery. While it was beautiful, original and like nothing I have ever seen before I am not sure how comfortable it would have been to live in as the seating offered looked hard and rather cold to me.

There were some very clever parts of the house and one that attracted me was the huge window overlooking the lava fields towards a volcano. The window was placed so that this volcano is central in the window so that it looks like a piece of art in itself.

The garden in the very front was rather typical of Lanzarote with citrus trees, cacti and other plants that were capable of surviving the poor soil and hot dry climate.

If you are ever in Lanzarote I would strongly recommend a visit even if you are not in to art or artist you couldn’t fail to be impressed with the house built into the lava bubbles. I can promise you that it is unlikely that you will have seen a house quite like this anywhere else. It is further of interest as it was the home of Lanzarote’s most celebrated artist and the person who had a strong influence over the fact that Lanzarote has remained largely unspoilt scenically by the visiting tourist trade.

Thanks for reading. This review may be posted on other sites under my same user name.

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