Casa Lercaro

This sixteenth-century manor house rivals the Balconied House for pomp and belongs to the golden fund of buildings built in the traditional Canary Island style. It is definitely worth going to the courtyard, where the restaurant currently operates, and admire the exquisitely carved baroque decorations on the traditional balconies. If you cross the courtyard, you can see a level below, or in the lower courtyard, a water wheel, which is left of the water mill that used to grind gofio.

The house was built by Lercaro, a Genoese merchant who arrived on the island after the conquest of Tenerife. As the legend goes has it that the Lercaro family wanted to forcefully marry their 15-year-old daughter, Catalina, to an elderly Italian gentleman. However, Catalina was not at all happy about this and so she spent the whole night crying. On the wedding night, however, Catalina couldn’t take it anymore and decided to take her own life in the well. It is said that after that the servants started hearing crying in the kitchen of the house constantly at night. According to legend, Catalina’s body is buried somewhere in the courtyard of the house. Casa de Lercaro is one of the buildings of the Museum of History and Anthropology complex, Museo de Historia y Antropología in the historic center of the city, and it is said that to this day, museum workers occasionally hear someone crying in the house.