Castillo de San Felipe

Castillo de San Felipe is easy to mistake for a purely scenic coastal relic, but its most distinctive feature is not its setting—it’s its deliberate design: a pentagonal fortress built in refined colonial style, of mampostería (masonry), shaped to control a specific stretch of coastline at Puerto de la Cruz. What you’re looking at originally belonged to a system, not a single strongpoint. The castle was one of four fortines that defended the city in earlier centuries, guarding the approaches and the harbour-side refuge where corsairs might try to shelter after raids.

A defensive outpost by a river mouth

The castle sits on the coast about 900 meters outside the main built-up area, at the mouth of the barranco de San Felipe, which gives the site its name. Nearby is Playa Jardín, but the key geographic fact is that the terrain funnels movement toward this point—exactly what coastal fortifications try to exploit. Construction began in 1599, first occupying a position with two “lánguidas plataformas” equipped with small guns that had already proven effective in repelling a pirate attack by five ships. The fortification was completed by 1604, and from that moment it served as a defensive base against corsairs seeking cover near the harbour.