In the period before the Castilian conquest, the Valley of Güímar was one of the nine menceyatos or kingdoms into which the island of Tenerife was divided. During the conquest, in the final years of Guanche independence, its mencey was Añaterve, successor of Acaymo, who had been mencey before him (possibly his father), and his court was based in the cave-palace of Chinguaro. The territory covered a broad area stretching from the summit down to the sea, including parts of the present-day municipalities of Güímar, Arafo, Candelaria and El Rosario. This menceyato holds a special place in the island's memory because of its link to the Virgin of Candelaria: according to the account recorded by the chronicler Friar Alonso de Espinosa, the Marian image was found by Guanche shepherds on the beach of Chimisay, in the lands of Güímar, almost a century before the conquest, and was kept first at Chinguaro and later in the cave of Achbinico, in neighbouring Candelaria, today the patron saint of the Canary Islands.

Güímar was one of the so-called "peace" menceyatos, which offered no armed resistance to the Castilian troops during the conquest of the island, completed in 1496. After its incorporation into the Crown of Castile, the valley retained for generations a notable Guanche population, part of which kept its identity until the seventeenth century thanks to the relative isolation of the midland districts. The new colonial order was built upon the former aboriginal settlement, with land and water grants and the arrival of settlers.

From the sixteenth century the valley's economy was based on agriculture, favoured by a mild microclimate and by the richness of its volcanic soils. The first crops of sugar cane and cereal were followed, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, by a thriving wine production that became a hallmark of the district. The Valley of Güímar, open to the sea and sheltered by the mountain ridge, offered ideal conditions for a midland agriculture that supplied much of the island.

Among the most singular and debated features of the Güímar landscape are the Pyramids of Güímar, a group of stepped dry-stone structures located in the district of Chacona. Several hypotheses about their origin coexist, and none should be taken as proven. The most widely held interpretation within the archaeological community links them to agricultural activity: they would be orderly piles of stone (majanos) resulting from the clearing of cultivation plots, a common practice in the Canary Islands. By contrast, the Norwegian researcher Thor Heyerdahl, who settled in Tenerife and promoted the Ethnographic Park in 1998, argued for a possible astronomical or ritual meaning and pointed to formal similarities with structures of other cultures. His work saved the site from disappearing under an urban-development project, although his theories about the origin do not enjoy consensus support. To this day, the debate over the dating and purpose of these structures remains open.

Another natural landmark of the municipality is the Malpaís de Güímar, on the coastal strip. It is a landscape of purely volcanic origin, declared a natural site of national interest in 1987 and reclassified as a Special Nature Reserve in 1994, dominated by the cone of Montaña Grande and by extensive, geologically young lava fields that shelter one of the finest examples of cardón-and-spurge scrubland in the archipelago.

The historic centre of Güímar preserves the layout and traditional Canarian architecture around the Mother Church of San Pedro Apóstol. The church originated in a chapel built at the beginning of the seventeenth century and was enlarged and remodelled between the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries until it reached its present three naves, with a tower completed in the first third of the nineteenth century. Güímar gained the status of municipality in 1812, the title of villa in 1900 and that of city in 1961.

Today Güímar is a city of just over twenty thousand inhabitants that combines the agricultural activity of the valley, services, an industrial estate and a natural and cultural heritage that attracts visitors interested in the Guanche legacy, the Ethnographic Park, the Malpaís and its traditions, keeping alive the memory of one of the most important kingdoms of pre-Hispanic Tenerife.