Puerto del Carmen
The old town gives it away: a small fishing harbour where men still play boules on the quayside, restaurants with outdoor terraces angled toward the marina and the dark volcanic peaks beyond. Puerto del Carmen began as a settlement of 194 people in 1904, known simply as Tiñosa, and the bones of that place are still here if you know where to look.
The seven kilometres of Avenida de las Playas that stretch south from the old town are a different story — bike lanes, beach bars, dive centres — built on the moment in 1967 when Hotel Los Fariones opened and changed what this corner of Lanzarote was for. Both versions of the town coexist without much friction.
💛 What travellers fall for
People who come back tend to anchor themselves in the Viejo Puerto end rather than the avenue. The old harbour restaurants are the draw — seafood, terrace tables, volcanic peaks in the distance. Playa Chica, right there in the old town, is the entry point for most of the dive sites, and the visibility — 25 to 30 metres year-round — keeps divers returning.
Experiences you don't want to miss
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Book directly at the providerHow Puerto del Carmen came to be
The settlement now called Puerto del Carmen was already inhabited when the Normans arrived on Lanzarote, and appears in records as Tiñosa from at least the 16th century. It was declared a Port of General Interest in 1900, though Arrecife took that status back in 1928, and by 1904 the town had a population of 194 — fishermen, mostly. In 1957 it was renamed Puerto del Carmen in honour of Nuestra Señora del Carmen.
The turn came in 1967 with the opening of Hotel Los Fariones, the first major tourist hotel. When Lanzarote Airport's runway was extended for jet aircraft in 1970, the infrastructure for mass tourism was in place. Package holidays arrived in earnest from 1978, and visitor numbers to Lanzarote nearly doubled in three years. Today the island receives over a million visitors annually, and most of them come through Puerto del Carmen.
Who and what shaped it
Landmark buildings
See Puerto del Carmen in motion
Plan your visit
On the map
When to go
The temperature range across the year is narrow — around 20°C in winter, peaking near 28°C in August — and annual rainfall barely reaches 120mm, mostly in December. The sea stays swimmable year-round, warming to 23°C in summer, and winter days still average over six hours of sun.
Right now
Background & history adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA) · specs from Wikidata (CC0) · weather from Open-Meteo · map data © OpenStreetMap contributors · photos from Wikimedia Commons / Unsplash with per-image credit. No third-party reviews or social posts reproduced.