Teguise Market

Lanzarote’s Famous Sunday Market

Every Sunday morning, the old town of Teguise throws open its cobbled streets to the biggest and best-known market on the island, and one of the largest in the Canaries. For a few hours each week, hundreds of stalls fill the historic centre, the bars and cafés spill out onto the squares, folk musicians play, and thousands of locals and visitors come to browse, haggle, eat and soak up the atmosphere.

It’s a Lanzarote institution and a proper day out, and whether you’re after a souvenir, a taste of the local food or simply a wander through one of the prettiest towns on the island, it’s well worth setting your alarm for. Here’s everything you need to know.

A Market With Real History

The Teguise Sunday market has been running since March 1985, so it’s been a fixture for around forty years now. It started small, with somewhere between sixteen and twenty stalls, set up to give the island’s farmers and artisans a place to sell their traditional produce and crafts.

The cobbled streets of the old capital made a perfect setting, and it grew and grew from there into the sprawling market you’ll find today, with several hundred stalls at its peak and a reputation as the most important market in the Canary Islands. It’s become as much a part of the island’s Sunday rhythm as anything.

La Villa de Teguise

Part of what makes this market so special is where it’s held. Teguise, often called La Villa, is the former capital of Lanzarote and one of the oldest and most beautiful towns on the island, all cobbled streets, whitewashed buildings, grand old houses and historic churches, with the Santa Bárbara castle looking down from a nearby volcano, where locals once sheltered from raiding pirates. For six days of the week Teguise is a sleepy, quiet inland town where not a great deal stirs.

Then Sunday comes, and it’s transformed, the streets closed to traffic and filled with stalls, music and crowds, before emptying out again by early afternoon. Seeing the town in both moods is part of the charm, and it’s worth arriving early enough to appreciate the architecture before the awnings go up.

One important thing to get straight, because it catches people out: Teguise the historic town is not the same place as Costa Teguise the coastal resort. They share a name and a municipality, but the market is in the old inland town of Teguise, up on the plateau in the centre of the island, not down at the beach resort. Make sure you head to the right one.

Getting there on market day

Teguise sits roughly in the middle of the island, so it’s an easy trip from anywhere. If you’re driving, it’s about twenty minutes from Costa Teguise and Arrecife, around thirty from Puerto del Carmen, and forty-five or so from Playa Blanca in the south, mostly on good, clear roads.

On a Sunday morning the traffic is fine early on and busier later, so the earlier you set off the smoother it is. You can also get there by public bus, the guaguas, with extra services laid on for the market on Sundays, though buses take longer and can involve a change at Arrecife, and queues for the bus home can be long. A taxi is another option, and of course there are organised excursions, more on those below.

Teguise Market Parking

Because the town centre is closed to traffic for the market, you park on the outskirts and walk in, which is only a few minutes on foot. On Sundays, temporary car parks appear on the land around the town, including the area by the football pitch, and there are signposted parking areas dotted around the edge of the historic centre.

Expect to pay a small fee, usually around two euros for the day, often to attendants who direct you to a space. The golden rule is to arrive early, ideally before ten, as spaces close to town fill up fast and it gets much harder to park as the morning goes on. Get there early and you’ll park easily and have the market to yourself for a while before the crowds build.

What You’ll Find at Teguise Market

The market is a real mix, and browsing is half the fun. You’ll find plenty of genuine local craft and produce, handmade jewellery, some made with olivine and volcanic stone from the island’s beaches, organic cotton clothing, leather goods, ceramics, aloe vera products, local cheeses, honey, wines and food. Alongside that there’s a good deal of the usual tourist-market fare, souvenirs, sunglasses, beachwear and clothing, and, it’s fair to say, a fair bit of imitation branded goods, so shop with your eyes open and haggle a little on anything without a price tag.

The main square by the church is the place for food, with stalls serving everything from Canarian dishes to burgers, German and English food, homemade sweets and international treats. And there’s often traditional Canarian music and folk dancing near the church, performers in traditional dress, sometimes with the timple, the little five-string Canarian guitar thought to have been born on Lanzarote, which adds a lovely bit of local colour.

Teguise Market is Smaller than it once was, but still worth it

It’s worth being honest about one thing. The Teguise market isn’t quite what it was a few years ago. At its height it counted more than four hundred stalls, but the pandemic hit it hard, and like many markets it has come back smaller than before, with fewer stalls than in its heyday and some visitors who remember the old days noting the difference.

That said, don’t let it put you off. It’s still comfortably the biggest and best market on the island, still buzzy and colourful, still a lovely morning out in a beautiful town, and still absolutely worth a visit. Just go with sensible expectations, a good market and a gorgeous old town rather than an endless sea of stalls, and you’ll have a great time.

Excursions to Teguise Market

If you’d rather not drive or wrestle with the buses and parking, plenty of excursion companies run coach trips to the market from all the main resorts on Sunday mornings, with a bus from near your accommodation and a set time to return. It takes all the hassle out of the day, no parking, no navigating, no bus queues, and it’s an easy, affordable way to go, especially if you fancy a glass of something with lunch.

The coaches tend to arrive around mid-morning, which is also when the market is at its busiest, so it’s the trade-off for the convenience. If you want the market at its quietest, your own transport and an early start still win, but for ease, an organised trip is hard to beat.

Planning your visit and making a day of it

You don’t need a huge amount of time for the market itself, a couple of hours is plenty to wander the stalls, grab a coffee or a bite, watch a bit of the music and pick up anything that catches your eye. The ideal plan is to arrive early, around opening at nine or soon after, enjoy it before the coach crowds pile in from about half ten, and be having lunch or moving on by the time it starts packing down around one or two.

Since you’re up in the north of the island anyway, it’s well worth building the market into a fuller day out, as some of Lanzarote’s best sights are close by. The Santa Bárbara castle and its pirate museum sit right above the town. A short drive brings you to the string of Manrique attractions in the north, the Jardín de Cactus, the Mirador del Río with its views over to La Graciosa, the Cueva de los Verdes and Jameos del Agua, as well as the pretty palm-filled valley of Haría. Do the market in the morning and pick one or two of those for the afternoon, and you’ve got a perfect Sunday. Just remember most of the market packs up by early afternoon, so it’s very much a morning affair, do that first, then explore.