Category: Culture

Behind the walls of the Santa Maria Magdalena convent, we find the regular Lateran canonesses nuns. Crossing a flower walkway, we find the barefoot Carmelites.

The building that housed the El Águila stores and the Can Forteza Rey building, located in Plaza del Marqués del Palmer in Palma, are so closely linked that they seem to be one building. They represent different examples of modernist architecture.

A few kilometres away, leaving the town of Sineu, is the Delfa or Adelfa estate, surrounded by extensive farmland and a lush woodland, enclosed within an island made up of the Delfa Houses, a stately home dignifed from the outset by the white marble coat of arms of the Rossinyol family.

The Museu de Mallorca exhibits works of the fine and decorative arts, that cover the period from the conquest of Mallorca, in the 13th century, until the first decades of the 20th century. 

One of the few remaining examples of Moslem architecture still preserved on the island, the Arab Baths can be found in the gardens of Can Fontirroig, situated in Number 7 of the Can Serra street in Palma.

Can Balaguer is right in the centre of Palma, right next to the commercial area of Jaime III and the Paseo del Born.

History Bendinat Castle
Bendinat is an old Moorish farm estate, documented in the 13th century with the name ‘Bendinex’.
It has passed through the hands of several families since the 15th century, but it was the marriage between Pedro Caro Álvarez of Toledo and Elisabeth Szécsény Zichy-Ferraris which commissioned the neo-Gothic castle of Bendinat.

Access to the La Real monastery is through a door on the side of the church, there is a two-story cloister, with three point archways supported by spiral columns on the ground floor and fluted pillars on the top floor.

Palma’s Calle Sant Roc 4, holds a long cultural tradition. This palace, that backs on to the Cathedral, has hosted the headquarters of many study related institutions.

Did you know that the garden of the Hesperides is found in Punta Alcanada (Mallorca) Pinar’s hill?

There is a varied selection of exhibitions programmed for the Can Prunera Modernist Museum for this year.

When walking around the heart of Palma, we come across many Majorcan patios that bear witness to history, art and time. One of the most emblematic of these can be found in Can Vivot, on Calle Can Savellà number 4.

The Crystal church is a structure of dazzling beauty, built upon concrete and iron ribs that sustain 39 stained glass windows, providing the building with a mystical aura. The windows depict scenes of nature and the cosmos, characterising the Franciscan order, combined with biblical scenes.

Ca’n Carasses or Ca’n Pavese is a building in the middle of Palma.
 

A visit to the Diocesan Museum in Mallorca includes a full tour of the island’s Christian art.

In 1571 a wall was built to protect Santanyí from looting by the Saracens, we still access the town’s centre through the old porta murada (gateway).
 

Mallorca is so much more than just sun, sand and sea. Mallorca has a very wide and varied cultural offer.

Calle Temple number 9 is built over an archway that looks like a fortified door. And it is, it covers old Muslim towers and was the access point to the Temple fortress.

City Hall presides over Plaza de Cort, and all the pretty streets that lead to it; next to City Hall is the palace that is home to the Consell Insular.

The Jewish community spread out across various areas of Palma, making its mark throughout a large area of the historic centre. Walking round the “call major” and “call menor” we can explore the pretty streets in the city centre.

Let’s take a walk through the city’s main streets, visiting the first churches to be founded after the conquest of Mallorca.
 
 

Landscape Worship: Interpretation of landscapes can be varied, and depends on each person’s technique.

Dry Stone walls go right back to prehistoric times, we can see examples such as the “navetas” or the “talayots” (local prehistoric structures), and extends further than the Mediterranean, as far as Japan or Cuzco.

The Sant Francesc Royal convent in Palma de Mallorca, set in the square bearing the same name, has a beautiful, perfectly conserved Gothic cloister and constitutes one of the first expressions of this architectural style in Mallorca.

Back in 1911 Joan Magraner and Margalida Vicens opened their modernist mansion in Calle Lluna, Soller.

There is a magnificent monument on the Paseo Sagrera in Palma de Mallorca that cannot be missed when one visits the city.

A tour: from the end of the 19th century till the beginning of the 20th.

Mallorca has the most sundials per square kilometer in all of Spain.

In the last twenty years, Palma de Mallorca has worked on new city parks and beautified or enlarged those that were already there.

The Jardines de la Misericordia (Gardens of Mercy) is a small, charming park that abounds with vegetation, sunny and shady areas as well as pleasant corners perfect for some quiet reading time.

The so called “snow houses” are an important part of our cultural and ethnological heritage. In Mallorca, collecting and trading snow to make ice dates right back to the 16th century.

Market and art; until now two almost contradicting words that when placed together in a sentence can even offend those who think that artists come from another planet and that they can survive with just love and air.

The importance and efficiency of using a planning and comprehensive planning and conscious Mallorca goes back to Roman colonization.

In 2013 Mallorca will be celebrating an important anniversary: 300 years since the birth of Father Juníper Serra, whose teachings in the Americas have turned him into one of the most famous figures of local religious history. 

The ancient city walls of Palma were knocked down decades ago, but some valuable traces remain: the bastions of Sant Pere and of the Prince, right on the sea front, the only survivors out of the thirteen that marked the ancient renaissance city wall.

The Archaeological museum of Son Fornés is located 2.5 km northwest of the town centre of Montuïri, Mallorca, on the estate which bears the same name which is located 4km from the local road which leads to Pina.

Antonia Tomás has a special way of celebrating Christmas. Each year she creates a nativity scene that has been getting bigger and bigger as time has passed and this year it will stand no less than 34m2 tall.

The patios of the noble houses in Palma are one of the urban elements most characteristic of the city. While today, their preservation constitutes a historical reference that makes the Mallorcan capital unique within Spain, in their age of splendour they were the very symbol of power and status.

A Catholic Cathedral located in Palma de Mallorca.
Popularly known as La Seu, construction began in 1229 and went on for three centuries. In 1931, the building was declared a Historical-Artistic Monument.

When that came out of Siurell figurine, have been attributed to this small flute magic forces. The winds of Mallorca, Gregal, Llevant, Xaloc, Migjorn, Llebeig, Ponent, Mistral and Tramontana, sometimes infused with fear. For the inhabitants were uncontrollable forces of nature to which they were exposed without remedy, and employing the Siurell whistles as a kind of totem to the stormy winds.

The ancient Roman city of Pollentia is located within the medieval walls of the old historical centre of Alcúdia.

The Santueri castle is located strategically on top of a hill, at 408 metres above sea level in Majorca’s Serra de de Llevant.
 

Between 455 and 534 the island confronted part of the Vandal Kingdom. Already in 425 they had landed in the island, they plundered and destroyed Pollentia. From the year 534, Majorca began to form a part of the Byzantine Empire.
 

The “Bulls of Costitx” or “Caps de Bous” (Bull Heads) are three bronze heads from the Talayot period.

The Myotragus Balearicus was a mammal, endemic to Mallorca. Was discovered in 1909 by the palaeontologist Dorothea Bate.

The Son Real public estate, with an area of 395 hectares, is located on the Northeast coast of Mallorca, in the municipality of Santa Margalida.

There are important archaeological, ethnographic and natural remains, which make it a great open-air museum.

Traditional dress plays an important role in Mallorca’s history and culture. Known as the “dress of the countryman” or “baggy dress”, it is the typical clothing worn by the general population in imitation of the upper classes.

Commissioned by Mallorcan financier Joan March Ordinas, the March Palace, located in the old town — specifically, where Conquistador Street meets the steps of the Cathedral, and with its main entrance on Palau Reial Street –, was built between 1939 and 1945.

During the talayót era and before the conquest by the crown of Aragon, this castle used to be the centre of the Arabian resistance.

Modernism arose in Europe during the final decade of the nineteenth century as a reaction to the Classicism of the previous centuries.

Castellitx, Santa Lucía, Sant Pere d’Escorca, Santa Ana, Sant Miquel de Campanet, La Sangre in Muro, Santa Fe in Palma. Most of these 13th-century Majorcan churches are now 14th century Gothic or completely rebuilt during the centuries that followed. 

Capdepera Castle in Mallorca is a fortified structure that surrounded the primitive town of Capdepera, built on the Benifilia settlement. Its construction began with the walls and would have begun in around the year 1300.

The slingshot has played a significant role in the history of the Balearic Islands. It would be impossible to delve into the history of the Balearic Islands without making reference to the Balearic slingers, for the very word, “Balearic”, means, literally, “Master of Throwing”. The islands’ slingers were introduced to the world of slinging at birth.