CASA SAN MARCOS

Welcome to our home!

We live here roughly five months per year, mainly during the winter. It's a lovely old house that hasn't been destroyed by any misguided 'modernisation' during the last century. That is a rare thing, and it's why we fell in love with it. According to available information, parts of the house date from the 1500s, while the main parts are from the 1700s. We have been careful to respect the character and soul of the house, and it retains the original thick stone walls with deep window recesses, hand-hewn hardwood floorboards polished with age, rough-cut exposed beams in the high ceilings, heavy wooden doors that creak and groan, and hand-made single pane windows that rattle in the wind. When it rains, you hear the raindrops on the palm trees in the open central patio, and when we have the occasional easterly Calima wind, light dust from the Sahara seeps in. It's all part of the experience of living here. Geographically, we are in northwest Africa, but culturally and politically, we are definitely in España. 

Our house is in Vegueta, the historic center of Las Palmas, and there are lots of churches, chapels, monasteries, old family mansions and other historical buildings tucked away on the cobblestone streets. Only a few blocks from us stand three aligned palm trees, descendants of the ones that were used for navigation and allegedly gave name to Las Palmas. Columbus stayed here on his first voyage across the Atlantic to the New World, and his travels are documented in la Casa de Colón, right behind the imposing Santa Ana cathedral. Pirates have repeatedly attacked Vegueta over the centuries. Sir Francis Drake was repulsed by the Spanish garrison, but the monastery Santo Domingo, just around the corner from our house, was burned to the ground by Pieter van der Does when he sacked the town in 1599. El Muséo Canario, on our street, covers the pre-Spanish history of the original inhabitants of the island, a stone-age culture of Berber origin.

We, the owners of Casa San Marcos, are a semi-retired Swedish couple who have travelled the world both for work and pleasure. Frank still works as a professional photographer, mainly on wildlife conservation issues in Africa. The furniture and objects in our home reflect our eclectic tastes. Most have been collected by us over the years, others are family heirlooms, and quite a few pieces were left in the house by the previous owners. Every little thing in the house has a story, and we hope that the mix will make you feel at home in Casa San Marcos.

¡Bienvenidos!

Erika & Frank af Petersens