In the 16th century the first owner of the original house was Lieutenant and Gentleman Nuño Núñez, Mencía Díaz de Clavijo’s first husband. She married again with Juan de Anchieta, scrivener and jurado of Tenerife. They are the parents of internationally known Father José de Anchieta, who lends his name to the house.
On 14 March 1986 the house of the Blessed Padre Anchieta was designated Historical-Artistic Monument relevant to the Autonomous Region.
Although it has now been confirmed that this is not the house where the missionary was born, he did live here for the first fourteen years of his life. Descendants of the Anchieta family inherited the house through majorat and they married into the Castile family in the late 17th century. Poet Manuel Verdugo (1877-1958) also lived here; in 1962 it housed the Hall of Residence for Girls “Virgen de Candelaria”; and the Escuela de Actores de Canarias was here until 1987.
Following tradition, Casa de Anchieta is arranged in two storeys with a tiled roof and around a central courtyard with the stairs on the side of the second section. The house is on a trapezoid-shaped plot and has three façades: the main one faces Plaza del Adelantado and it is where the main door and more important rooms are placed.
The side façade faces calle Las Quinteras and the back of the house looks onto a new small square which used to be the vegetable garden of the house.
The building as it stands today is the result of a thorough refurbishment undertaken by the town council which was carried out in the early 21st century. Its neoclassic façade is from a reform made in 1905, following the plans of architect Mariano Estanga; it replaced the asymmetrical openings of the original building. This irregular layout is still visible on the calle Quinteras façade.
The interior was adapted to suit its new uses in the 19th and 20th centuries. At present, some of the features from the 16th and 17th centuries are still noticeable: load-bearing walls, roofs, collar beam truss, courtyard and cellar in the lower ground floor.
