Icod de los Vinos beyond the Drago: a guide to the old town
Icod de los Vinos has a problem many towns would envy: its tree is so famous that it hides everything else. Most people who come park the car, look at the Drago Milenario, take the photo and leave. Forty minutes, sometimes less.
The town hall publishes its own heritage inventory, and the list is long: twelve religious buildings, sixteen houses and country estates, three caves, three notable trees and fourteen streets and squares that count as heritage in their own right. None of it is far away. Nearly all of it fits into a two-hour walk around the same square where the Drago stands.
This guide is for people who already know why they came and want to stay a while longer. If you are here for the tree and only the tree, we have a full guide to the Drago Milenario with opening times, prices and where to see it for free.
The two squares the old town is built around
Icod's old town makes sense once you understand that there are two squares, and that they are not the same one, even though they sit a minute apart.
The Plaza de la Constitución, which everyone calls Plaza de La Pila, is the big one. It opens towards the sea, and it is where you can see the Drago without paying to go in. It is also where local people sit.
The Plaza de Andrés de Lorenzo Cáceres y Ossuna is the other one: smaller, more enclosed, up against the church. The long name throws visitors off, but this is the square that gives the old town its atmosphere.
Around those two are the Plaza Domínguez Alfonso, the Plaza de Luis León Huerta and the Plaza del Calvario. Icod is a town of linked squares rather than one main square.
The friary, San Marcos and eleven more churches
The Convento Franciscano del Espíritu Santo and its Franciscan church are the largest piece of religious heritage in Icod. Next to it, the Iglesia de San Marcos is the parish church of the old town and the building that marks the town's outline from a distance.
From there the list keeps going, and its length is the surprise: Iglesia de San Agustín, Iglesia de Nuestra Señora del Amparo, the Hospital de los Dolores with the church of Nuestra Señora del Patrocinio, the Capilla de Nuestra Señora de los Dolores, and five chapels spread across the municipality: San Antonio de Padua, El Calvario, Nuestra Señora de las Angustias, Nuestra Señora del Tránsito and Nuestra Señora de Buen Paso.
As the town hall itself puts it, this is religious heritage that speaks across centuries of art, belief and tradition. The practical version for a visitor: do not try to see all of it. The friary and San Marcos are in the old town and come with the same walk. The chapels are scattered and need a car.
The houses of the families who built the place
This is the part most people miss, because they are facades and you have to know to look at them. Icod was a town of powerful families, and the result is one of the most remarkable urban ensembles on the island.
In the old town you will find the Casa de los Marqueses de Santa Lucía, in the San Antonio quarter, plus Casa Lorenzo Cáceres, Casa León Huerta, Casa Pérez Rijo, Casa Tabares, Casa Álvarez, Casa Campino, Casa Oramas de Saá, Casa Hernández Martínez de la Peña and the house known as the Casa de la Inquisición.
Outside the centre are the agricultural estates, which are a different thing altogether: Hacienda del Vizconde de Buen Paso, Hacienda de Las Cañas, Hacienda Alzola, Hacienda Boquín and Hacienda Valois. They are what is left of the period when this valley lived on wine and bananas, and they explain why the town is the size it is.
Many are private and cannot be visited inside. You take them in from the street, which is a good reason to walk slowly.
There is a second dragon tree, and hardly anyone knows
The Drago Milenario is not the only notable tree in the municipality. The town's inventory lists two more.
The Drago de San Antonio stands in the quarter of the same name. It is smaller, and it has no park, no ticket and no queue. For a lot of people it turns out to be the surprise of the day.
The Pino Valois completes the three. All of them are, in the town hall's own words, living icons whose resilience has carried them down to us.
Underground: three caves, and one of them is among the world's largest
There are two kinds of cave under Icod, and the distinction matters.
The Cueva del Viento is a lava tube, carved by molten rock on its way to the sea, and it is one of the largest in the world. It is visited with a guide and by advance booking; you cannot simply turn up, and places are limited. If you want to do it, book it before you plan the rest of the day, not after.
The Cueva de los Guanches and the Cueva de Don Gaspar belong to the other kind: shelter and home of the Guanche ancestors. They are not conventional tourist visits, but they explain why this area was inhabited long before there was a town with a square in it.
The streets that are heritage in themselves
The municipal inventory does not list only buildings. It lists streets, and that says something about the place. Calle Hércules, Calle de las Angustias, Calle San Sebastián, Calle de San Agustín, Calle Siervo de Dios, Calle Key Muñoz and Calle el Barranco are the fabric of the old town.
The town hall puts it better than we can: the best way to know a place is to walk it and to get lost in its streets. In Icod that works literally, because the centre is small enough that getting properly lost takes effort.
Down to San Marcos
Playa de San Marcos is Icod's beach, a sheltered dark-sand cove a few minutes below the town by car. It is a beach for local people rather than for tourism, with restaurants along the front and an atmosphere quite different from the streets above.
If you do the old town in the morning, San Marcos is the natural way to close the day.
How to plan the visit
A realistic half-day:
Start with the old town early, while the squares are quiet and there is somewhere to park.
Leave the Drago until after the walk, not before. See it first and everything else feels like an appendix.
Book the Cueva del Viento in advance and build the day around it, because it has a fixed time.
San Marcos at the end, for lunch or a swim.
Walk wherever you can. The centre is compact; you only need the car for the chapels, the estates and the beach.
One honest warning: many of the grand houses cannot be visited inside. If you arrive expecting museums, you will feel short-changed. If you come to walk a town with five hundred years of layers on it, Icod is worth a great deal more than forty minutes.
Cover photo: Icod de los Vinos with the Teide behind it, March 2025. Own photograph.
