The Estate of the Marquis of la Quinta Roja

Located on the outskirts of San Pedro de Daute, the first town to be established in the “Isla Baja” in the northwest of Tenerife, the Estate of the Marquis of la Quinta Roja is, obviously, one of the best historic mansions of Tenerife. An architectural gem nestled in a tropical paradise.

Although not known for sure when it was built, it is known that the mansion happened to be one of the victims of the volcanic eruption that devastated the nearby port of Garachico in 1706.  So except for the small adjacent chapel to Saint Christopher which we know dates from 1620, the rest of the mansion was rebuilt in 1735, as an inscription reads at the front door.

This fantastic stately mansion that belonged in the seventeenth century to the first Marquis of Quinta Roja, Don Cristóbal de Ponte and Llarena, has a wonderful and very rural U-shaped courtyard, and also, as an archaic reminder  of late-medieval periods, an exterior wall crowned with battlements.

This beautiful Tenerife mansion stands majestically facing the Atlantic Ocean and under the watchful eye of the Roque de Garachico, and is surrounded by palms and banana trees , which has, how could it be otherwise, a centenary dragon tree in its singular courtyard.

Surrounding the house, is a 130.000m2 estate, currently occupied almost entirely by banana variant Clone Brier.

In the past early days of this true Tenerife manor house, sugar cane was the predominant crop,  as it was in the whole island, until  competition from the Antillies made unprofitable  the growing and producing  of sugar as an export product in the Canary Islands by the late sixteenth early seventeenth century.

Nevertheless, the estate still has a so-called rum room,  where a sugar cane press was operative until not too long ago.

As sugar cane failed, Malmsey wine production, the famous “Canary”, so much praised by Shakespeare and with known avid consumers such as Charles III of Spain and Catherine the Great of Russia, among others,  became key to this estate as happened in most of the Canary Islands. Malmsey became the second  great export product of Canarian History.

Of course, grain and wheat, was produced as well for local consumption.

Today this magnificent mansion is owned by the Tenerife Cabildo, although we are not aware of its use or future purpose.