Palma de Mallorca Travel Guide

Palma de Mallorca is the elegant capital of “Majorca” and the Balearic Islands’ largest city. The island of Mallorca is more similar to a continent than an island for its range of landscapes and wildlife. The Balearics, located in the western Mediterranean, has a fascinating history. They were important centers for trade, beginning with the Phoenicians. Greeks later traveled to Mallorca but didn’t leave as big a mark as they did on the Peninsula, particularly in Catalonia (Empuries is an important Greco-Roman site, for example). The Romans colonized the “Balears” (as they are known in “Mallorquin,” the local dialect of Catalan) in the year 123 AD, and they stayed for almost five centuries!

This was a golden period, with many public and private buildings erected, gardens planted, and poets nurtured. The Vandals destroyed this period of peace and were responsible for obliterating most of what the Romans had left behind. Later (as in most of the Mediterranean’s islands and cities) came the Byzantines, Normans, and Berbers. However, the Moors made the most significant positive impact on Mallorca.

Many historians credit the Moors (Arab travelers who had journeyed west through North Africa and north into Spain, becoming a new ethnic group, mixed with Berbers and tribespeople) for essentially “civilizing” Mallorca. They brought with them irrigation systems, which boosted the island’s prosperity. The Moors stayed in power until the island was finally conquered by the King of Aragon, James I, in 1229. Palma’s magnificent Cathedral’s construction began less than a century later and took 500 years to finish! Other Europeans, such as the British and the French, arrived in Mallorca in the 18th century, leaving their mark on the island’s gastronomy and architecture. Finally, in the 1950s, Mallorca began a massive tourism boom that has not stopped growing.