Palma de Mallorca

La Seu, the Gothic cathedral of Mallorca, stands on the site of the city's main mosque at the southern edge of the old town, its buttresses rising straight above the old sea wall and the bay. Inside, a lofty nave on slender pillars is lit by a great rose window, one of the largest in Europe. In the early twentieth century Antoni Gaudí reworked the sanctuary: he moved the choir stalls out of the nave, let more light reach the altar and hung a wrought-iron canopy above it. Beside the main apse, Miquel Barceló clad the chapel of the Holy Sacrament in a ceramic skin of fish, fruit and loaves that seems to grow out of the stone.

Beside the cathedral, the Almudaina was the fortress of the island's Muslim governors before the kings of Mallorca rebuilt it as their Gothic palace. It remains an official residence of the Spanish crown, used for state receptions, and its stone halls and the chapel of Santa Anna are open to visitors. Below its western walls, the gardens of S'Hort del Rei, with their pools and fountains, run down toward the Plaça de la Reina.

Below the cathedral, the Parc de la Mar lies between the old walls and the seafront road, laid out around a broad lake. The cathedral's south front mirrored in its water is the classic view of Palma. Stairs climb from the park to Dalt Murada, the walkway along the top of the walls, which runs beneath the cathedral's buttresses and looks out across the bay to the port.

East of the cathedral, the lanes grow quieter. On Carrer de Can Serra, the Banys Àrabs are one of the few buildings left from the Islamic city: a small domed bath hall whose horseshoe arches rest on columns, set in a walled garden. A few streets north, the lanes around Carrer de Monti-Sion and its church were the medieval Jewish quarter, the Call. Close by, the Gothic basilica of Sant Francesc keeps a cloister of slender columns and the tomb of Ramon Llull, the medieval Mallorcan philosopher; the statue in front of it is of Junípero Serra, the friar from the island who founded the first Spanish missions in California.

The old town's great houses turn plain walls and heavy doors to the street and open inside onto patis, stone courtyards with wide arches and stairways climbing to the upper floors. Most are private, but where a gate stands open the courtyard may be looked into from the street; Can Vivot on Carrer de Can Savellà is among the grandest. Nearby, the Gothic church of Santa Eulàlia stands on its own square, and a short walk west, Plaça de Cort is the square of Palma's town hall, with deep carved wooden eaves over its front and a gnarled olive tree, said to be centuries old, before it.

North of Plaça de Cort, streets of shops climb to Plaça Major, an arcaded square closed to traffic. From it, Carrer de Sant Miquel, a pedestrian shopping street, runs north toward Plaça d'Espanya and the station. Near its northern end, the Mercat de l'Olivar is Palma's main covered market: fish and seafood, meat and cheese, fruit and vegetables, and stalls hung with sobrassada, with counters where shoppers stop for a plate and a glass. Mornings are its busiest hours.

West of the Almudaina, the Passeig del Born is Palma's main promenade: a broad walk under plane trees between two lanes of traffic, running from the Plaça de la Reina to the Plaça del Rei Joan Carles I, lined with shops and the stone fronts of old town palaces. From its upper end, the Avinguda de Jaume III continues west under arcades of shops, and in the evening the benches down the middle of the Born fill with people sitting out.

Between the Born and the harbour, the narrow streets of Sa Llotja hold many of the old town's bars and restaurants and are busiest after dark. At the quarter's seaward edge stands the Llotja itself, the fifteenth-century merchants' exchange: a single Gothic hall behind battlements and corner turrets, facing the waterfront.

At the western corner of the old walls, the Renaissance bastion of Sant Pere holds Es Baluard, Palma's museum of modern and contemporary art, with Balearic, Spanish and international work from the twentieth century to the present. The walkway along the top of the bastion looks over the port and its moorings to the castle on the wooded hill west of the centre.

Just west of Es Baluard, outside the line of the old walls, Santa Catalina grew up as the quarter of fishermen and sailors, and its streets of low houses now hold many of the city's restaurants and bars. At its heart, the covered Mercat de Santa Catalina sells fish, meat and produce, with counters where the neighbourhood eats at the bar. On the rise at the quarter's seaward edge, Es Jonquet keeps a row of old stone windmills and narrow lanes of fishermen's houses above the seafront.

From the Parc de la Mar, the Passeig Marítim follows the curve of the port west, with a palm-lined promenade and a cycle path between the traffic and the yacht moorings. It passes below Santa Catalina and Es Jonquet and ends at the ferry terminal at the western end of the harbour, where the ferries from Barcelona and Valencia dock, though most visitors reach the island on flights from the mainland. In the evening it is the city's walk, with the cathedral lit up behind.

West of the centre, above the El Terreno quarter, Bellver Castle crowns a hill of pine woods. Built in the early fourteenth century for the kings of Mallorca, it is one of the few circular castles in Europe: two storeys of arcades ring a round courtyard, three towers stand against the outer wall, and the keep stands apart, joined to the castle by an arch. It houses the city's history museum, and from its roof the view takes in the bay, the cathedral and the mountains behind the city. The way up is a climb through the woods from El Terreno, or a taxi to the gate.

Further west along the coast, in Cala Major, the Fundació Pilar i Joan Miró stands where Miró lived and worked from 1956 until his death in 1983. His large white studio, designed for him by his friend the architect Josep Lluís Sert, is kept much as he left it, and the walls of Son Boter, an older farmhouse on the estate that he also used as a studio, still carry his charcoal sketches. Galleries beside them show changing selections of his work, and city buses run out along the coast road from the centre.

East of the Parc de la Mar, a seafront path for walkers and cyclists follows the shore past Can Pere Antoni, the city beach nearest the old town, to Portixol, a small harbour of fishing boats with restaurants along its front. It continues through Es Molinar, the old fishermen's quarter beside it, to the sandy beach of Ciutat Jardí. Beyond lie the resort beaches of the bay: the long strand of the Platja de Palma to the east, and the coves and resorts west of the city.