Cool Kids Are Into Art: A Lanzarote Guide

Returning to his native Lanzarote in the 1960s after years spent in Madrid and New York, César Manrique imagined the island as a living artwork. Rather than imposing architecture onto nature, he designed spaces that seemed to emerge from it, reflecting colors and textures of the volcanic landscape. He believed beauty should come before speculation, fought against high-rise development, and argued that tourism should enrich a place rather than consume it.

1. Mirador del Río

In 1973 Manrique carved a viewing point into the cliff at the very top of the island. From the outside it is nearly invisible, two circular white apertures in the rock, then you walk through and the whole northern ocean opens in front of you through glass. The interior, all white curves and local materials, has a bar and a sculptural ceiling that makes the whole room feel like the inside of a shell.

2. LagOmar

In the early 1970s, an English developer named Sam Benady commissioned Manrique and sculptor Jesús Soto to design a house carved into the volcanic hillside of the village of Nazaret. While the house was still under construction, the actor Omar Sharif was on Lanzarote filming The Mysterious Island, visited the site, and bought it on the spot. Within days, Benady challenged him to a game of bridge. What Sharif did not know was that his opponent was the European Bridge Champion. He lost the house in a single evening, left Lanzarote and never came back. The building, now a museum and bar at night, is my fav spot on the island.

3. Fundación César Manrique

Manrique built his home directly on top of five volcanic bubbles, transforming natural lava chambers into living rooms connected by tunnels and gardens. More than a museum, it is the clearest expression of his philosophy:

Architecture should never dominate nature. It should reveal it.

4. El Cóctel Bar de Kamezí

Hidden within Kamezí Boutique Villas, this intimate space feels surreal after sunset. The rooftop cocktail bar sits above the Michelin-starred restaurant below, with the ocean to one side and Fuerteventura on the horizon. The bar does not take reservations, come for the view.

5. Jameos del Agua

Manrique transformed the cave itself into architecture. A natural lava tube becomes an auditorium, a restaurant, a swimming pool and a cultural centre, all connected to each other. Hidden within the underground lagoon lives one of Lanzarote’s most unexpected residents: a tiny blind albino crab found nowhere else on Earth.

6. Bodega Uga

The vineyards on the island are unlike any others. Each vine is planted in its own crater, dug into the black volcanic ash and protected from the winds by a semicircular wall of lava stone. Bodega Uga is the perfect place to experience it. Order some good wine, their avocado salad and the calamari they’re simply delicious!

7. Famara

Famara, on the northwest coast, is my favourite beach on the island. Below dramatic cliffs rising 600 metres above the sea, a vast stretch of sand runs for kilometres with almost nothing built on it. The village behind the beach is small and filled with surfers who come for the waves and the wildness of the landscape.

8. Jardín de Cactus

This was Manrique‘s last major public work on the island, completed in 1990, and it is both the most playful and the most rigorous thing he made. Everything has been thought through: the sight lines, the shadows, the relationship between the individual plant and the whole. It is, genuinely, a garden as sculpture.

9. Mura

Teguise was the island’s capital for centuries and on Sunday mornings it still fills with one of the best markets in the Canaries. Mura is the coffee shop to go to, set in the white village on the main square. You’ll find specialty coffee, toasted sandwiches and house-baked pastries.

10. Las Grietas

These dramatic fissures were formed as lava cooled and fractured, creating narrow passageways that feel like landscapes from another planet. The resemblance is no coincidence: Lanzarote has often been used as a stand-in for extraterrestrial worlds in film and photography. Walking through Las Grietas, it is easy to understand why César Manrique always described the island as something otherworldly, here you get exactly what he meant.

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