The Dominican monks started to build the convent in 1527 and stayed there until it was secularized. It later had other uses: parish house, ecclesiastic prison, and occasionally bishops’ residence. More recently, it has been a Diocesan Seminary and an Adult Education Centre.
The Church features two naves; the oldest one (the former Ermita de La Concepción) with a semi-circular arch standing on thin columns in the Catholic Monarchs style. To this single nave several aisles were gradually attached on the Gospel side (some with supports and bossage arches by J. Benítez), which ended up making a new nave with a door on the façade. Its capitals and polygonal-based supports are of Lusitanian Manuelin influence. The chancel is from a later date, early 17th century, and the choir was designed by P. de Savalía. The different heights of the independent roofs confirm this is the case.
The tower bell gable is in an angle with the church. A vertical masonry band underlines its importance on the façade as it contrasts with the white-washed walls.
Regarding the rest of the building, works done in the 19th century distorted a good deal of the convent, which was recently refurbished by the Cabildo Insular to use it for cultural and institutional purposes. It consists of two courtyards or cloisters; the main one –which is square-shaped- is surrounded by open galleries with stone and wooden vertical supports on the ground floor and baluster parapets on the upper floor. The galleries leading to the building were historically used as cells and chapterhouse, except for the section next to the main nave in the church. The second courtyard, towards calle Santo Domingo, has a gallery closed with masonry walls and slash windows in the upper floor, propped up by vertical wooden supports and base.
Worth noting in the exterior is the calle Santo Domingo façade, where windows and closed balconies alternate in the upper floor and there are small windows on the ground floor. The tower is the result of recent works and towards the east, the remains of a former vegetable garden are still visible with a centenary dragon tree partially surrounded by an old crenellated wall. Of the original works, only the courtyard, the stone staircase and the chapel, founded by Amaro Rodríguez Felipe, remain.
Apart from the church of Santo Domingo de La Laguna being declared a Historic-Artistic Monument relevant to the Canary Islands Autonomous Region, on 20 December 1986, the compound as a whole (church and convent) and their surroundings were declared Cultural Heritage Asset, under the Monument category on 7 October 2008.
