Casa de Colón — Attraction in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria

Columbus Museum is housed in an eye catching building in Vegueta. Although the construction does not date back from Columbus era, it features some balconies saved and restored from ruined mansions around Las Palmas. Shortly after leaving the port of Cadiz in August 1492, Columbus found himself forced to stop in Gran Canaria as the rudder of La Pinta (one of the three caravels departed to discover the New World) needed some repairs, impossible to be carried out during sailing. After La Pinta's rudder got fixed, Columbus fleet eventually left the Canaries heading west. The museum’s main exhibits refers to this important moment in the history of the archipelago and world. In addition to the Columbus stuff (vintage navigational instruments, charts, books, flags and maps among others), the museum displays artifacts from pre-Columbian Americas and old paintings depicting the colonial era. There's also a section dedicated to the history of archipelago, although there are not many details about the people who inhabited the islands before the arrival of the Spaniards. There are actually more details about their hunting dogs than about the native tribes themselves. The only doubtless info is that it took five years to Spanish troops to kill them all and "conquest" the island. It's sad that the lives of archipelago’s native inhabitants did not count in Columbus era and still not matter nowadays. In one of the four patios of the museum, there are two...

It is claimed that Christopher Columbus stayed in this very building in the year 1492, prior to reaching the American continent, hence its name - Casa de Colón. History books tell different stories of what led to this possible stop, ranging from: It was a planned pit stop; the ship needed repairs; a mutiny; or to recruit Canarian sailors for their vast knowledge of the ocean.

We didn't quite go inside the museum due to limited time and a desire to see more of Vegueta, but from some FOMO-inspired research conducted later that night, it was learned that the interior has been beautifully restored with old maps pasted on walls, ship models, and two resident Macaw parrots that freely roam the courtyard. The entry fee is currently €4.

Traveling to foreign lands and then writing about those journeys does kind of force me to look more into the "why" of things seen or observed. It could be as simple as, WHY is this building here? Or WHY do cats in this country have more pointy ears or longer tails? And before I know it, I'm 8 chapters deep in some history book reading about Colombus' childhood, the kind of book that my HS teacher forced me to read. Life comes full circle and traveling is the greatest teacher. Anyone else feel this way?

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Pretty good museum, but a bit misleading. And NOT a free entrance, as another reviews states. It’s 6 euros. I think it’s worth it to go here as long as you understand two things:

Columbus never lived here. He MAY have slept here or had a drink here but nothing remains from that time, not even the interior architectural structures, it’s all been remodeled in subsequent eras. It’s been combined with neigiboring homes to create a larger structure than was here at his time. Also the external facade that everyone is showing pictures of thinking that it’s where Columbus stayed WAS NOT in existence at the time of Columbus. It was added much much later.

This probably explains why there are:

No guided tours or even audio guides. They wouldn’t like the angry faces when people realize it’s not really his house or “casa”.

So if you accept that the name is a bit of a misleading trick for tourists, you can go inside and enjoy the good explanations of Columbus routes, a recreation of his ship cabin, some nice 1600s and 1700s patios, and facsimiles of important papers related to Columbus, as well as a good models of what the city looked like when he came here (it was basically a tiny fort town).

Overall a good museum ABOUT Columbus, marketed as a his house, which it wasn’t.

Also some excellent unrelated...