History of the city map
Map of Leonardo Torriani
History of the city mapPrepare for travel to the past. When looking at this map, made a few months ago, you are watching the sprawling city of the sixteenth century. How is this possible? The configuration of the streets of the old town of La Laguna, which was defined at that time, has hardly been modified since then. Buildings have been lost along the way, new ones have appeared and some have been remodeled, but the skeleton of the city, its streets and corners, remains.
Note, bird's eye view, the arrangement of the apples on the ground. The city is split in two: the Villa de Arriba, on the east side from the Concepcion Church, and Villa de Abajo, westward from the same point. For the first, the founding place of settlement, urban planning was not pursued any. He established his primary residence on Alonso Fernández de Lugo, the officer of the Crown of Castile which was given license to conquer, to explore and govern the island of Tenerife. Shortly thereafter, a decision that would forever change the urban destination of La Laguna: relocate your home to another point in the fertile plain that he had discovered.
The development of the city revolved around the figure of his ruling. From its new location in the villa known as Down another street began to emerge based on the prevailing planning at that time, the track Hippodamus or grid. As they went up buildings and squares, checkerboard following this principle, was appearing in the vegetation the first non-fortified colonial city, a city-territory. What if the mountains up walls
surrounding and protecting the city? The location of La Laguna, in a valley five hundred feet above sea level, made possible the birth of a new concept of settlement, a model that, henceforth, would be implemented in many New World colonial enclaves.
The Italian engineer Leonardo Torriani in 1588 produced the first map of the city, at least the oldest preserved. What we know today as the historic center, just as you can see on this map has already been defined at the time: the small cluster of houses jumbled west of La Concepcion, the geometric design later to the east, making its way from this church to the Villa de Abajo through three main streets, Blacksmiths, Bishop Rey Redondo and San Agustin, the magic triangle drawn taking these pathways as fundamental side Nava and Grimón and Square Head ... La Laguna you can see today is the same as the advance imagined when viewing the valley from the nearby hills.
