What to see in Lanzarote: what's worth it and what it costs

Lanzarote is not an island with sights, but an island that is a sight in itself. What stands here stands on a landscape younger than Cologne Cathedral: on 1 September 1730 the ground opened up in the west, and by April 1736 the lava had buried several villages and the island’s most fertile area. A second eruption followed in 1824. Around a quarter of the island’s surface has lain under solidified rock ever since.

That explains why the things to do here look different from anywhere else in the Canaries. There is no old town to wander through, and no laurel forest. There is a national park where nothing grows, half a dozen buildings by a single artist, and a wine-growing region that looks like a mistake.

Timanfaya – and what visiting has required since 2026

The national park is the reason most people come, and it is the item with the most pitfalls. Entry costs €30 for adults; children under 7 pay nothing. What matters more is something else: tickets are now only available online in advance, for a fixed time slot. Nothing is sold at the ticket office any more. It is open daily from 9:30am to 3:45pm, and anyone arriving outside their booked slot is holding an invalid ticket.

Within the park itself, you do not drive yourself. A bus leaves from the Islote de Hilario every twenty minutes on the Ruta de los Volcanes, fourteen kilometres through the crater landscape, 35 to 40 minutes, included in the price. Then there are the geothermal demonstrations at the Islote: brushwood that catches fire on its own in a hole in the ground, water that comes back up as a column of steam.

Honestly, this is exactly the point where opinions divide. You sit in a bus, the windows do not open, and you are not allowed to get out. Anyone expecting a hike through lava fields will be disappointed. Anyone who takes the park for what it is – a nature reserve you are only allowed to enter because you do not actually enter it – gets forty minutes found nowhere else.

Anyone who wants to go in on foot needs the guided walk run by the park administration. It is free, places are strictly limited, and booking goes through the Spanish national parks reservation website, often weeks in advance. The park sets its own conditions here, including an age limit – ask about it before booking for the whole family.

The third option is guided tours to Timanfaya, from €44. Check before booking whether park admission is included in the price. Not a single operator listing in our records says so on its own, and at €30 per person that is the difference between cheap and expensive. The most booked option is a hike through the volcanic landscape for €44 with 4.8 stars from 1,494 reviews – it does not go into the national park itself but through the lava fields next to it, and is therefore not a substitute but something different.

César Manrique: five buildings, one principle

César Manrique, born in Arrecife in 1919, died in a car accident in 1992, shaped this island more than any artist has shaped a European region. Not just because he built things, but because he pushed through what others were not allowed to build: no high-rises, no billboards along the country roads, white houses with green woodwork inland and blue on the coast.

His buildings are now paid attractions, and they are charged for individually – the island government abolished the former combined tickets in 2024.

Jameos del Agua, €17, a collapsed lava tube with a saltwater lake inside. Living in that lake is a blind, almost transparent crab found nowhere else; it has become the island’s emblem.

Cueva de los Verdes, also €17, children aged 7 to 12 pay €8.50. The tour lasts around 50 minutes and covers one kilometre of a lava tunnel that measures eight kilometres in total. It is dark, narrow in places, and more impressive than any photo of it.

Mirador del Río, €9, daily from 10am to 5pm, last admission 4:40pm. A viewing space built into the cliff, 475 metres above the strait to La Graciosa. Anyone visiting only one of the Manrique addresses and who likes a view should take this one.

Jardín de Cactus, also €9, a former lapilli quarry near Guatiza, terraced and planted with cacti.

All four together cost €52 per adult, not including transport. That is why guided tours to the Manrique buildings start from €10 and are still not cheap: the price for a day trip to Timanfaya, Jameos and Cueva de los Verdes runs from €51 to €89, and what accounts for the €38 difference is almost always the admission fees. Where the buildings in the north are located and how to combine them in a day is covered in What to see in North Lanzarote.

La Geria: wine-growing in pits

Between Uga and Masdache lies a slope covered with thousands of semicircular dry-stone walls, each built around a dug-out pit, and in each pit a single vine. The ash from the eruption stores the night-time moisture, and the wall keeps out the trade wind. Machines cannot get through here, everything is done by hand, and the yield is correspondingly small.

The wine made from it – mostly Malvasía – does not taste like a souvenir but dry and salty. Wine tasting in La Geria starts from €26. Anyone who does not drink can still drive along the LZ-30 road; the landscape alone is worth the detour.

The coasts – and where it costs nothing

El Golfo on the west coast: half a crater whose other half the sea has taken, with a green lagoon inside it. Entering is prohibited; it is viewed from the lookout point, and that is enough. A few kilometres further north at Los Hervideros, the surf pushes up through lava caves. Both cost nothing.

Papagayo in the south is the exception among the beaches: pale sand, sheltered coves, clear water. Access via the track costs €3 per vehicle, paid at the barrier – card is preferred, but keep some cash in the car anyway. On foot or by bike, access is free – from the edge of Playa Blanca it is about 5.5 kilometres to the first car park, with no shade. Most people therefore arrive by boat: a mini-cruise from Playa Blanca for €35, or a catamaran trip to Papagayo with lunch from €66.

Famara in the northwest is the opposite: over six kilometres of open beach beneath a 600-metre cliff, constant wind, constant swell. It is no good for swimming with children, but all the better for learning to surf – surf lessons in Famara start from €45.

What lies underwater

Off Playa Blanca stands the Museo Atlántico, around three hundred concrete figures on the seabed. It lies at a depth of twelve to fourteen metres, which means it is a diving destination, not a snorkelling one. From the surface you see only shapes. Snorkelling and diving starts from €34.20, but anyone coming for the figures needs to dive.

The other way to see what lies below without diving yourself is in Puerto Calero: a real submarine that descends to 30 metres, one hour, €65, 4.6 stars from 1,394 reviews. For the hour, that is expensive, and it is the only thing on this island that someone who cannot swim can also take part in. More on this under Boat trips and submarine.

Where Lanzarote is the wrong island

Anyone looking for forest, hiking trails through greenery and mild evenings is in the wrong place here – for that there is La Gomera and the north of Tenerife. Anyone who likes flat and wide but not volcanic rock is better off heading to Fuerteventura. And anyone imagining nightlife will find it in Puerto del Carmen, on a single street and nowhere else.

What Lanzarote offers instead is something none of the neighbouring islands has: a landscape from the 18th century that looks as it did on its first day, and a place where a single artist was allowed to decide what an entire island looks like.

With children it reads rather differently again – what works at which age is covered in Lanzarote with kids, for the very youngest in Lanzarote with a baby and Lanzarote with a toddler. An overview of everything bookable is on the page Things to do in Lanzarote.