The museum dates back to 1840, when the city agreed to make some boxes to preserve flags from the French Revolutionary Wars. The building is of a classical style and was established in early 1929 by the architect Eladio Laredo. The exterior is decorated with ten different busts of the illustrious of Tenerife.
The museum has fourteen rooms that have a background as a repository of works from the Prado Museum in Madrid. The museum houses an art collection ranging from sixteenth-century Flemish to twentieth-century paintings, as well as a sample of sculptures and crafts. The "Tríptico de Nava y Grimón" by the Flemish painter Pieter Coecke is one of the most notable parts of the collection. Other noteworthy works are those by Canarian painter Juan de Miranda, Afonso Gaspar de Quevedo, Jose Rivera and Cristóbal Hernández de Quintana, among others.