Item Details

Urban Planning in the First Unfortified Spanish Colonial Town: The Orientation of the Historic Churches of San Cristóbal de La Laguna

Issue: Vol 4 No. 1 (2018)

Journal: Journal of Skyscape Archaeology

Subject Areas:

DOI: 10.1558/jsa.34336

Abstract:

The city of San Cristóbal de La Laguna in the Canary Island of Tenerife (Spain) is of exceptional value as the first unfortified colonial city to follow regular plan - a grid, outlined by straight streets that form squares - in the overseas European expansion. It constitutes a historical example of the so-called "Town of Peace", the archetype of a city-republic in a new land that employed its own natural boundaries to delimit and defend itself. Founded in 1496, the historical centre of the old city was declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1999. We analyse the exact spatial orientation of 21 historic Christian churches currently existing in the old part of La Laguna, which we take as a good indicator of the original layout of the urban lattice. We find a clear orientation pattern that, if correlated with the rising or setting Sun, singles out an absolute-value astronomical declination slightly below 20°, which, within the margin of error of our study, might be associated with the 25th July feast day of San Cristóbal de Licia, the saint to whom the town was originally dedicated. We also discuss at some length some recent proposals which invoke somewhat far-fetched hypotheses for the planimetry of the old city and conclude with some comments on one of its outstanding features, namely its Latin-cross structure, which is apparent in the combined layout of some of its most emblematic churches.

Author: Alejandro Gangui, Juan Antonio Belmonte

View Original Web Page

References :

Alemán de Armas, A., 1986. Guía de La Laguna. La Laguna, Spain: Librería El Águila.

Aznar Vallejo, E., 2008. “La época fundacional y su influjo en el patrimonio histórico de San Cristóbal de La Laguna”. Anuario de Estudios Atlánticos 54 (1): 169–205.

Belmonte, J. A., 2015. “Pre-Hispanic Sanctuaries in the Canary Islands”. In The Handbook of Archaeoastronomy and Ethnoastronomy, edited by C. L. N. Ruggles, 1115–1124. New York: Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-6141-8_106

Belmonte J. A., A. Tejera, M. A. Perera and R. Marrero, 2007. “On the Orientation of Pre-Islamic Temples of North-West Africa: A Reappraisal. New Data in Africa Proconsularis”. Mediterranean Archaeology and Archaeometry 6 (3): 77–85.

Corbella Gualupe, D., 2000. “La arquitectura de las ermitas del siglo XVI, en el municipio de La Laguna”. In III Coloquio de Historia Canario-Americana. VIII Congreso Internacional de Historia de América, edited by F. Morales Padrón, 2833–2846. Gran Canaria, Spain: Cabildo de Gran Canaria.

Esteban C., J. A. Belmonte, M. A. Perera Betancort, R. Marrero and J. J. Jiménez González, 2001. “Orientations of Pre-Islamic Temples of North-West Africa”. Archaeoastronomy 26: S65–S84.

Fraga González, M. C., 1977. La arquitectura mudéjar en Canarias. Santa Cruz de Tenerife, Spain: Aula de Cultura de Tenerife.

Gangui, A., A. C. González-García, M. A. Perera Betancort and J. A. Belmonte, 2014. “La orientación como una seña de identidad cultural: las iglesias históricas de Lanzarote”. Tabona: Revista de Prehistoria y Arqueología 20: 105–128.

Gangui, A., A. C. González-García, M. A. Perera Betancort and J. A. Belmonte, 2016. “On the Orientation of the Historic Churches of Lanzarote: When Human Necessity Dominates over Canonical Prescriptions”. In The Materiality of the Sky: Proceedings of the 22nd Annual SEAC Conference 2014, Malta, edited F. Silva, K. Malville, T. Lomsdalen and F. Ventura, 125–134. Lampeter: Sophia Centre Press.

González-García, A. C., 2015. “A Voyage of Christian Medieval Astronomy: Symbolic, Ritual and Political Orientation of Churches”. In Stars and Stones: Voyages in Archaeoastronomy and Cultural Astronomy. Proceedings of the SEAC 2011 Conference, edited by F. Pimenta, N. Ribeiro, F. Silva, N. Campion and A Joaquinito. British Archaeology Reports, International Series 2720: 268–275. Oxford: Archaeopress.

González-García, A. C. and J. A. Belmonte, 2014. “Sacred Architecture Orientation across the Mediterranean: A Comparative Statistical Analysis”. Mediterranean Archaeology and Archaeometry 14 (2): 95–113.

González-García, A. C. and J. A. Belmonte, 2015. “The Orientation of Pre-Romanesque Churches in the Iberian Peninsula”. Nexus Network Journal 17 (2): 353–377. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00004-014-0231-7

González-García, A. C. and I. Sprajc, 2016. “Astronomical Significance of Architectural Orientations in the Maya Lowlands: A Statistical Approach”. Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports 9: 191–202. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jasrep.2016.07.020

Herráiz Sánchez, F., 2007. La Laguna oculta. El cielo y la piedra. Santa Cruz de Tenerife, Spain: Ediciones Idea.

Kosowsky, M., 2017. HeyWhatsThat [online]. Accessed January 2017, http://www.heywhatsthat.com/

McCluskey, S. C., 2015. “Orientation of Christian Churches”. In Handbook of Archaeoastronomy and Ethnoastronomy, edited by C. L. N. Ruggles, 1703–1710. New York: Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-6141-8_173

Municipalité de San Cristóbal de La Laguna, 1998. Ensemble historique de San Cristóbal de La Laguna. Proposition d’inscription comme bien culturel dans la liste du patrimoine mondial, vol. 1 [online]. Accessed July 2017, http://whc.unesco.org/uploads/nominations/929.pdf

Natural Resources Canada, 2015. Magnetic Declination Calculator [online]. Accessed January 2017, http://geomag.nrcan.gc.ca/calc/mdcal-en.php

Navarro Segura, M. I., 1999. La Laguna 1500: la ciudad-república. Una utopía insular según “Las leyes” de Platón. San Cristóbal de La Laguna, Spain: Ayuntamiento de San Cristóbal de La Laguna.

Navarro Segura, M. I., 2006. “Las fundaciones de ciudades y el pensamiento urbanístico hispano en la era del Descubrimiento”. Scripta Nova. Revista electrónica de geografía y ciencias sociales 10 (218): Art. 43. [online] Accessed December 2017, http://www.ub.edu/geocrit/sn/sn-218-43.htm

Schaefer, B.E., 1993. “Astronomy and the Limits of Vision”. Vistas in Astronomy 36 (4): 311–361. https://doi.org/10.1016/0083-6656(93)90113-X

Tejera, A., 1991. La prehistoria de Canarias. Tenerife y los guanches. La Laguna, Spain: Centro de la Cultura Popular Canaria.

Torriani, L., 1978. Descripción de las Islas Canarias. Santa Cruz de Tenerife, Spain: Goya Ediciones.

UNESCO World Heritage Committee, 2018. “San Cristóbal de La Laguna” [online]. Accessed 22 March 2018, http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/929

Vitruvius, 1931. On Architecture, vol .1: Books 1–5, trans. F. Granger. Loeb Classical Library 251. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.