Castle of Santa Bárbara or Guanapay Castle Lanzarote.

The Castle of Santa Bárbara is situated in the North-West of Lanzarote on the top of the Guanapay Mountain, reason for which it is also called Guanapay Castle.

This castle was built by Sancho Herrera as look-out and control point over the coast and revised by the engineer of the king Felipe II, Leonardo Torriani, in 1588 who transformed it in a defence tower providing it with cannons and battlements.

After losing its defensive utility, the castle nowadays is used as museum and repository for most of the documents from islanders who emigrated to America: passports, boarding passes, maps, fotographs, letters etc.

In the lower floor can be contemplated monoliths, anchors, stone paintings, fossils, clay and mud figures, ceramics, tools, statues, simbols and images of fertileness such as many skeletons, skulls and burial objects from the aborigines. In the upper floor can be found ceramics by Juan Brito an cannons.

The last refurbishment works to the castle were introduced by the Department of Renovation of the Community of Teguise in 1898 which pretended to restore the appearance it showed after being reworked by Torriani.