Mallorca

⚠️ Entry rules and local regulations change without notice. Before booking, check entry requirements and local rules — visas, access, nature reserves, visitor quotas — with the official authorities.

Mallorca is the largest of the Balearic Islands and the most visited in the Mediterranean. Palma, its lively capital, is home to the majestic Gothic cathedral of La Seu overlooking the bay. The Serra de Tramuntana, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, offers hikes, hilltop villages and breathtaking panoramas. To the east and north, dozens of calas with turquoise waters — Cala d'Or, Cala Millor, Cala Pi — make up a seaside paradise unrivalled in the Mediterranean.

The mountains, not just the calas

You come to Mallorca for the sea and return for the Serra de Tramuntana. This range, running the length of the north-west coast, is a World Heritage site not for its nature alone but as a cultural landscape: centuries of dry-stone terraces, irrigation channels inherited from the Arabs, and olive groves clinging to the slope. You cross it by the most spectacular road on the island, the one down to Sa Calobra, or aboard the wooden train to Sóller, in service since 1912, which climbs over the mountain from Palma.

Two villages hold the attention: Valldemossa, where Chopin and George Sand spent the winter of 1838-39 in the charterhouse — a stay the writer recounted with little kindness towards the Mallorcans — and Deià, perched above the sea and long a refuge for artists.

In Palma, La Seu cathedral deserves more than a glance: Gaudí worked on it for ten years, and in 2007 the artist Miquel Barceló completed a ceramic chapel there that unsettles as much as it fascinates. In the east, the Drach caves hide one of the largest underground lakes in Europe, where concerts are given from boats.

Spring, and the bicycle

The best windows are April to June and September to October: gentle heat, calas still quiet, paths walkable. July and August are stifling and saturated. One local phenomenon is worth knowing: from February to April, Mallorca becomes the training base for professional cycling teams — the passes fill with pelotons and hotels in the north are booked out for that reason alone.

A car, the calas and common sense

A car is essential once you leave Palma, but the most photographed calas — Cala Varques, Caló des Moro — are victims of their fame: tiny car parks, access on foot, crowds from 10 am. The rule is simple: go early, or choose the lesser-known beaches of the south-east.

At the table, look for ensaïmada at breakfast, sobrassada — a paprika sausage for spreading — and tumbet, the vegetable gratin that is the Mallorcan dish above all others. The best addresses are in the inland villages, not on the seafront.

Essentials & your questions