Balearic Islands

Palma, on a wide bay in the south-west of Mallorca, is the capital of the island and of the whole archipelago, and by far the largest town on the islands. Its Gothic cathedral stands above the old sea wall, and Palma's old town of lanes, courtyards and markets fills the streets behind it. The island's airport lies just east of the city, and the buses and trains that cross Mallorca start from Plaça d'Espanya, on the northern edge of the old town.

The Serra de Tramuntana runs the length of Mallorca's north-west coast, a limestone range of terraced olive groves, dry-stone walls and stone villages that UNESCO lists as a World Heritage cultural landscape. The Ma-10 road follows it from Andratx in the south-west to Pollença in the north, twisting along cliffs high above the sea, and the range's long climbs have made the island a training ground for road cyclists. Walkers follow the GR 221, the Dry Stone Route, along old mule tracks and paths through the mountains, in day stages between walkers' refuges.

Along the Ma-10, Valldemossa stands in a high valley around its charterhouse, the former monastery where Frédéric Chopin and George Sand spent the winter of 1838 to 1839. Further north-east, Deià climbs a hillside of stone houses to a church at the top, in whose cemetery the poet Robert Graves, who lived in the village, is buried; a path leads down to its small rocky cove. Beyond, Sóller fills a valley of orange and lemon groves ringed by mountains, its square overlooked by a church with a Modernista front, and Port de Sóller lies on a round bay below the town. Above the valley, the stone village of Fornalutx keeps its steep stepped lanes.

In the heart of the range, the monastery of Lluc stands in a high valley ringed by peaks. It is the island's chief place of pilgrimage, and its basilica keeps the dark statue of the Virgin that Mallorcans call La Moreneta. From the Ma-10 near Lluc, a narrow road crosses a pass and drops in hairpins to Sa Calobra, and at one bend it loops round and passes beneath itself. At the bottom, a path through tunnels in the rock leads from the small harbour to the mouth of the Torrent de Pareis, where the gorge opens onto a pebble beach between sheer walls. Walking down the gorge itself from Escorca is a long scramble over boulders, for experienced walkers in dry weather only.

In the north, Pollença is an inland town of stone houses, and its Calvari stairway of 365 steps, lined with cypresses, climbs to a chapel with a view over the plain to the sea. Its harbour, Port de Pollença, faces a sheltered bay, and from it a road runs out along the Formentor peninsula, past the Es Colomer viewpoint high above the cliffs and a pine-shaded beach, to the lighthouse at Cap de Formentor. Across the next bay, Alcúdia keeps its medieval walls and gates, with the excavated streets of the Roman town of Pollentia just outside them, and the long sandy beach of the Bay of Alcúdia runs south from its port.

On Mallorca's south coast near Colònia de Sant Jordi, Es Trenc is a long beach of white sand and low dunes with no hotels behind it, only the salt pans of Es Salobrar. Round the corner to the east, the coast breaks into calas, narrow inlets of clear water between pine-covered limestone, from the protected coves of Mondragó Natural Park near Santanyí northward past the resort of Cala d'Or toward Porto Cristo. At Porto Cristo, the Coves del Drac run deep into the limestone around an underground lake.

Maó, Mahón in Spanish, is Menorca's capital, built on cliffs above a deep natural harbour that reaches several kilometres inland from the sea. In the old town, Georgian-style houses with sash windows stand beside the churches and squares, and stairs and a winding road lead down to the quays, where restaurants line the water. The island's airport lies just outside the town.

At the island's western end, Ciutadella was Menorca's capital until the eighteenth century, and its old town of sandstone palaces and churches gathers around a Gothic cathedral. Ses Voltes, an arcaded street, runs through the centre, and below the walls a narrow harbour inlet holds fishing boats, yachts and a line of restaurants. Around the feast of Sant Joan on 24 June, riders in traditional dress bring their horses through the crowded streets, and the horses rear up among the people.

Menorca is scattered with hundreds of stone monuments built by its prehistoric people, and a selection of them is inscribed together on UNESCO's World Heritage list as Talayotic Menorca. Three forms recur: the talayot, a stone tower; the taula, a T-shaped monument of two great slabs standing inside a horseshoe-shaped enclosure; and the naveta, a burial chamber shaped like an upturned boat. The Naveta des Tudons stands in a field off the road east of Ciutadella, Torre d'en Galmés near Alaior is a settlement on a hilltop with its taula and talayots, and Talatí de Dalt lies just west of Maó.

Menorca's south coast is cut by ravines that end in small coves of pale sand between pine-covered cliffs; in the south-west, Cala en Turqueta, Cala Macarella and Macarelleta, the resort beach of Cala Galdana and Cala Mitjana follow one another from west to east. The north coast is wilder, with darker rock, reddish sand and fewer trees, around Cala Pregonda, the lighthouse on Cap de Cavalleria and the fishing village of Fornells on its bay. The Camí de Cavalls, an old bridle path, runs about 185 kilometres right round the island and is the way to many coves that no road reaches; it is waymarked in stages that suit a day's walk.

Ibiza Town, Eivissa in Catalan, is the island's capital and main port, set on a bay on the south-east coast below its walled upper town. Most of the island's buses start from the town, the ferries to Formentera leave from its port, and the island's airport lies a short way to the south-west.

On Ibiza's west coast, Sant Antoni de Portmany fills a broad bay, and in the evening crowds gather at the bars along the rocky shore at the edge of the town to watch the sun go down over the sea. The island's big clubs, on the road between Ibiza Town and Sant Antoni and along the beach of Platja d'en Bossa, open for a season that runs from late spring into early autumn. North of the bay, Cala Salada is a cove of clear water below pine woods; to the south, Cala Comte looks out over a scatter of rocky islets, and Cala d'Hort faces the sheer rock island of Es Vedrà offshore.

On the east coast, Santa Eulària des Riu is a quieter resort town with a seafront promenade and a small river, below the Puig de Missa, a hill crowned by a white fortified church. Inland, the island turns rural, with pine-covered hills, terraces of almond and carob trees, and villages such as Santa Gertrudis, in the middle of the island, and Sant Carles in the north-east, each grouped around a thick-walled white church. In the summer season, weekly hippie markets are held at Es Canar, near Santa Eulària, and outside Sant Carles. The quietest coves lie along the north coast, from Cala de Sant Vicent to Cala Xarraca and the bays around Portinatx at the island's northern tip.

Formentera, the smallest of the four islands, lies just south of Ibiza and has no airport: boats from the port of Ibiza Town reach La Savina in about half an hour by fast ferry. The island is almost flat, apart from the plateau of La Mola at its eastern end, and its quiet roads and country lanes make the bicycle the natural way round, with scooters for longer days. On the narrow sandy spit that points north toward Ibiza, the beaches of Ses Illetes and Llevant face each other across a strip of dunes beside the salt ponds of Ses Salines Natural Park, and the long beach of Migjorn runs along the south coast. Lighthouses stand at both ends of the island, one on the bare headland of Cap de Barbaria in the south-west, the other on the cliffs of La Mola. The clarity of the water comes from the meadows of posidonia seagrass on the sea floor between Formentera and Ibiza; the meadows share a World Heritage listing with Ibiza's old town.