Lanzarote

A great eruption in the 1730s buried a third of the island under lava, and what grew back is a landscape of black cones, red craters, white villages and vineyards planted in hollows of volcanic ash. The artist and architect César Manrique spent his life shaping how the island looks, and his work is the thread of a visit: the lava-tube concert hall at Jameos del Agua, the clifftop viewpoint at Mirador del Río, the cactus garden at Guatiza and the mazelike Cueva de los Verdes. In the south, the Timanfaya National Park, known as the Montañas del Fuego, takes you by coach across a lunar field of lava where the ground itself is hot, while the La Geria vineyards and the salt flats of Janubio show how people farmed an island with almost no rain. On the coast are the Papagayo beaches reached by catamaran, the little island of La Graciosa across the strait from the north, the surf of Famara and the Museo Atlántico, Europe’s underwater sculpture museum, off Playa Blanca. Winter, from about November to March, is the busy season for sun-seeking visitors, with warm days and a lively mix of visitors from northern Europe. This guide shows which tickets to book ahead, how to plan the north, the south and the sea, and where to stay, from a five-star family resort in Playa Blanca to a spa hotel on the Arrecife waterfront.