Museo de la Naturaleza y Arqueología

Located in Santa Cruz de Tenerife, MUNA exhibits the world’s largest collection on the Guanche people and explores the natural riches of the Canary Islands.

Planning your visit

MUNA holds the world's largest collection relating to the Guanches, the Indigenous people of the Canary Islands — Berber in origin, who reached the archipelago in antiquity and lived there in isolation until Castilian conquest in the fifteenth century destroyed their society within a few decades.

The mummies are the collection's core and are displayed with care: the Guanches practised mummification, wrapping bodies in goatskin and placing them in caves, and the surviving examples are among the best-preserved outside Egypt. Alongside sit pottery, stone tools, the enigmatic wooden and clay pintaderas, and skeletal material from which the population's origins have been reconstructed genetically.

The natural history half covers Canarian volcanism, endemic species and marine life, in an archipelago with exceptional rates of endemism.

The museum occupies a neoclassical former hospital in Santa Cruz. Allow two hours. Bookable options include admission with Teide legend tours. Current availability is listed below.