At the heart of northern Tenerife opens the Orotava Valley, one of the most fertile and celebrated plains of the archipelago, described by Enlightenment travellers as a paradise of volcanic soils, abundant water and Mount Teide presiding over the horizon. Before the Castilian conquest, this territory formed part of the menceyato (chiefdom) of Taoro, the most powerful and populous of the nine Guanche kingdoms into which the island was divided. Its aboriginal name, "Arautava" or "Arautápala", survives in the present-day place name. Taoro covered much of the valley —lands that today correspond to La Orotava, Puerto de la Cruz, Los Realejos, Santa Úrsula and the Acentejo municipalities— and produced some of the most remembered leaders of the indigenous resistance.

Mencey Bencomo, the penultimate ruler of Taoro, led the outright opposition to the adelantado Alonso Fernández de Lugo. In May 1494, the Guanche forces ambushed the Castilian army in the ravine of Acentejo, inflicting an almost total defeat in what became known as the Matanza (Slaughter) of Acentejo. Alongside Bencomo stood his brother Tinguaro, a skilful strategist who fell in battle shortly afterwards. Superior weaponry, epidemics and successive campaigns finally tipped the balance: in 1496 the conquest of Tenerife was completed and the rich territory of Taoro was divided among the conquerors and their collaborators.

The new settlement was born upon those lands. The distribution of land and water was organised at the start of the sixteenth century, and on 29 May 1503 La Orotava was established as an urban centre. The town's layout took as its axis the hermitage of Our Lady of the Conception, raised to a church in 1503; the alderman Diego de Mesa laid out wide streets and regular plots that still order the historic quarter today. In 1506 its first known mayor, Alonso Pérez Navarrete, is documented, governing a still very small population.

Prosperity came with export agriculture. Sugar cane opened the first economic cycle, soon replaced by the vine: the valley's wines, and especially the sweet Malvasia (Malmsey), achieved enormous fame in European markets —celebrated even in English literature— and formed the basis of local wealth throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. That wine-fuelled splendour allowed La Orotava to be recognised as an exempt town (villa exenta) on 28 November 1648. When the wine trade fell into crisis in the eighteenth century, the valley reinvented itself with new crops: cochineal for dyes in the nineteenth century and, later, the banana that still carpets its slopes.

The agrarian boom took shape in stone and wood. The great families —the Ponte, Franchi, Monteverde, Lercaro, del Castillo and other lineages of often Flemish, Genoese or Portuguese origin— built manorial houses with broad cobbled courtyards, columns and carved pine (tea) balconies, today a hallmark of traditional Canarian architecture. The Casa de los Balcones is the most famous example of this craft. To these houses were added churches, convents and hermitages that filled the old town with bell-gables and altarpieces, with the Baroque church of La Concepción —reopened in 1788— as the greatest jewel.

The town went on accumulating honours. Naturalists such as Humboldt, Bory de Saint-Vincent, Webb and Berthelot were captivated by the valley during their scientific expeditions. In 1906 King Alfonso XIII granted it the title of Very Noble and Loyal Town; in 1948 the church of La Concepción was declared a National Historic-Artistic Monument; and in 1976 the old quarter received the designation of Historic-Artistic Site, protecting its network of steep streets, squares and mansions.

Today's La Orotava keeps that heritage alive. The historic capital of the valley, it preserves one of the best-conserved historic centres in the Canary Islands and celebrates each year, during the octave of Corpus Christi, its extraordinary flower carpets along the streets and the great tapestry of volcanic Teide sands in the Town Hall square —a tradition declared an Asset of Cultural Interest by the Government of the Canary Islands in 2007 and recognised as a Festival of National Tourist Interest. Among historic gardens, water mills, museums and stately courtyards, the town blends heritage, tradition and the awe-inspiring backdrop of Mount Teide.