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.
Only the central room —destined to hot baths— and another adjoining room is conserved. These rooms are accessed through a portal with a horseshoe arch.
The central hall, with a square floor plan and composed of twelve columns and with horseshoe arches, is dominated by a dome made of bricks with five skylights for lighting purposes and steam evacuation, whose pendentives have only a few traces of their original decoration.
The adjoining room has a lateral corridor with a semicircular vault roof and is rectangular in plan.
It is suspected that materials from other buildings —of Byzantine or Visigothic period— were recovered and used for their construction, due to the stylistic diversity of the capitals of the columns.
Preserved only in part, the cold baths room no longer exists.
Madina Mayurqa, now known as Palma, was a city refounded by the Arabs on Roman remains. From the tenth century, the Arabs made a complex hydraulic system for the urban center and its garden, in addition to transforming the old city.
The Arab fortress known as the Almudaina was also built by the Muslims, although it was transformed into the Catalan conquest.
More information: Can Serra, 7 – Palma de Mallorca. Tel. 971 721 549 .