Caves of Valerón
| Caves of Valeron | |
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| native name: Cenobio de Valerón ("Monastery of Valeron") |
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General view of the caves
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 on Grand Canary - map of the Canary Islands |
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| Location | Santa María de Guía municipality, Grand Canary, Canary Islands (Spain) |
| Coordinates | 28°8′20.27″N 15°36′15.95″W / 28.1389639°N 15.6044306°W |
| Elevation | 275 m (902 ft) |
| Website | (Spanish) Cenobio de Valeron |
| Caves of Valeron | |
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Native name Spanish: Cenobio de Valerón ("Monastery of Valeron") |
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 Location of the caves of Valeron on Gran Canary, off the coast of Africa
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| Type | cave |
| Nearest city | Gáldar |
| Coordinates | 28°8′20.27″N 15°36′15.95″W / 28.1389639°N 15.6044306°WCoordinates: 28°8′20.27″N 15°36′15.95″W / 28.1389639°N 15.6044306°W |
| Original use | Collective granary |
| Official name: Cenobio de Valerón ("Convent of Valeron") |
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Valerón’s "monastery" (in Spanish cenobio de Valerón) is an archaeological site on the Spanish island of Grand Canary, in the municipality of Santa Maria de Guia, on Valerón's cliff. It is the largest pre-Hispanic collective granary built before Roman times and used by the island’s inhabitants until the conquest of the island at the end of the 15th century.
Close to Gáldar Painted cave, it is one of the emblematic sites of Grand Canary and is listed as a Spanish Property of cultural interest.
It is located 600 m (1,969 ft) (in direct line) south of the northern coast of the Gran Canary island, on the small GC-291 road, near Las Palmas (23 km (14 mi) east) and Agaete (11 km (7 mi) south-west) (see § "Access" for more details). Galdar is about 4 km (2 mi) west in direct line. The site overlooks the San Felipe ravine, a north-orientated funnel-shaped valley crossed over by a large bridge for the GC-2 motorway.
The place was chosen for its easy-to-dig tuff, for the fact that it is hidden from the sea and for its extremely steep access slopes that make good natural defences.
The collective granary known as "cenobio de Valerón" is a complex system of caves on several levels: 298 compartments with surfaces between one and three square meters, distributed on 8 levels. Altogether with silos, rooms, caves and cavities, there are more than 350 storage places. They were excavated with stone and wood tools in the soft tuff - cemented volcanic tephra - in the north-west face of the mountain known nowadays as Mountain of the Galician (“ Montaña del Gallego ”). The easy defence of the site, the natural shelter offered by a natural arch in the mountain and the conditions of temperature and dampness were making it ideal for its use.
The caves or silos are of varied forms and sizes, communicating somewhat with each other, and they are grouped on several superposed levels. The steps excavated in the rock still exist and they may have been complemented with stairs or scaffoldings and ropes, of which there are no archaeological remains.
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Wikipedia