Montañés House

Past the entrance hall, the courtyard opens up with no columns anywhere in it. The glazed galleries round its sides rest on Canary Island pine, and the floor was left clear so that carriages, pack animals and goods could come straight in from the street. The patio has an Andalusian look to it.

The façade tells the rest of the story. Cellars and warehouses sat at street level. Above them came a mezzanine where the business was run — documents, capital, the family's dealings with the Carta family — and the state rooms took the top floor. A second courtyard at the back handled servants and deliveries through a gate on what is now Viana Street, so the owners and the people who worked for them moved through separate halves of the house.

• A working building: Casa Montañés is the seat of the Canary Islands Advisory Council and keeps office hours, mornings only and never at weekends.
• No drinking water nearby: fill a bottle before you come.
• Toilets: the nearest free public toilets are about 370 m away.
• Tourist information: an information office stands about 218 m away, useful for the rest of the old town.

Casa Montañés fronts San Agustín Street in the old town of La Laguna, and you walk in from the street through the entrance hall. The nearest bus stops, Tabares de Cala and Deán Palahi, are both about 140 m away in a straight line. The two car parks closest to the house, about 83 m and 187 m away, are private, so do not count on parking at the door. The gate on Viana Street at the back was the service entrance; the front on San Agustín Street is the one to look for.

Best: a morning from Monday to Thursday.

Avoid: afternoons, Fridays and weekends.

The house keeps the hours of the council that works in it, and outside them the courtyard sits behind a closed door. On a closed day the façade can still be seen from San Agustín Street, with the mezzanine floor marking out where the old offices were.