Mallorca
The Largest Of The Balearic Islands, Holding The Serra De Tramuntana, A UNESCO World Heritage Cultural Landscape Inscribed 2011 For Its Dry Stone Terracing And Water Management · Palma, Balearic Islands
The largest Balearic island, and the one whose reputation does it the most damage. Mallorca has been a package destination since the 1960s and a few square kilometres of the Bay of Palma earned it a name it has never shaken off, which is unfortunate, because the rest of the island is something else entirely. The Serra de Tramuntana runs the whole northwest coast, a limestone range rising to over fourteen hundred metres with terraces, dry-stone walls and irrigation channels built over a thousand years; it is UNESCO-listed as a cultural landscape rather than for its scenery, which tells you what it actually is. Behind it are stone villages, a nineteenth-century wooden train to Soller, and a coast road that is one of the best drives in Europe. Palma itself has a cathedral on the seafront with a Gaudi interior. Hire a car, avoid the bay, and the island is an entirely different proposition from the one it is sold as.
Palma, Palma, Balearic Islands, 07001, Spain
NO OPENING TIME HERE WAS CHECKED, and the island has none: the roads, beaches and mountain paths are public. What matters is SEASONAL. A large share of the coastal resorts, hotels and restaurants CLOSE from November to March, while the mountain villages and Palma carry on year-round, so an out-of-season visit needs checking rather than assuming. PALMA CATHEDRAL keeps daytime hours with a shorter Saturday and closes to sightseeing on Sundays. The Soller train runs a reduced winter timetable.