Santa Cruz Audio Tours

Santa Cruz de Tenerife was founded on May 3, 1494 -- the Catholic feast of the Invention of the Cross -- when the conquistador Alonso Fernández de Lugo planted a wooden cross on the beach and claimed the island. Three hundred years later, in 1797, Admiral Horatio Nelson led a night assault on the city's harbor and was hit in the right arm by grapeshot fired from the Castillo de San Cristóbal. His arm was amputated above the elbow before sunrise. Nelson retreated. The city kept its cannon and the memory. The plaza where the battle centered has been named after him.

The city anchors the northeast corner of Tenerife, a small municipal territory of which 82 percent is classified as natural land because the Anaga Massif -- a dramatically eroded volcanic mountain range and UNESCO Biosphere Reserve -- takes up most of the municipality behind the urban waterfront.

The contrast is jarring in the best way: ten minutes from the city center and you are walking through ancient laurisilva forest in the cloud. Back in town, Santiago Calatrava's Auditorio de Tenerife, completed in 2003, rises at the waterfront in a sweep of white concrete that catches the light differently at every hour. Herzog and de Meuron redesigned the Plaza de España with a dramatic circular pool. The city has invested seriously in contemporary architecture while keeping its colonial core intact.