Menorca

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Menorca is the most easterly and best-preserved of the Balearic Islands. A UNESCO Biosphere Reserve, it protects still-wild nature and beaches. Mahón, its capital at the head of the world's second-largest natural harbour, retains a unique Georgian architecture inherited from the British occupation. The talayots — prehistoric taulas and navetes monuments — dot the island's interior, while the Camí de Cavalls, a 185 km coastal path, lets you discover its 75 wild beaches.

The quiet Balearic

Menorca is the Balearic island that said no. A UNESCO biosphere reserve since 1993, it banned high-rise building and large resorts early, kept its coast largely wild, and stayed a place of dairy farms, dry-stone walls and small towns. It is 694 km², fifty kilometres end to end, with two poles: Maó (Mahón), the capital, on one of the deepest natural harbours in the Mediterranean, and Ciutadella, the old Catalan-Gothic capital at the other end, with its palaces and cathedral.

The beaches are the main event. The south coast is a string of white-sand calas between pine-covered limestone cliffs — Macarella, Turqueta, Mitjana, Trebalúger — reached on foot or by boat; the north is redder, wilder and emptier, with Cavalleria and Pregonda under the lighthouse cliffs. The Camí de Cavalls, a 185-kilometre bridle path restored around the whole coast, links them all.

The island is also the densest prehistoric landscape in the Mediterranean: more than 1,500 talayotic sites — stone towers, T-shaped taulas, boat-shaped navetas — from a Bronze Age culture that existed nowhere else. Nine of them were listed by UNESCO in 2023. The Naveta des Tudons, a collective tomb from around 1000 BC, is the one to see first.

June and September, with the tramuntana in mind

June and September are the months: warm sea, the calas to yourself, hotels at half the August price. July and August are hot (30 °C) and full, with the small car parks above the southern beaches closed by mid-morning. The tramuntana, the north wind, can blow hard for days, mainly in winter and spring — choose the south coast when it does, the north when the south wind blows. The Festes de Sant Joan in Ciutadella, 23–24 June, with black horses rearing in the crowds, is the island's great festival.

A car for the calas, a bus for the towns

Menorca airport is five kilometres from Maó, with direct flights from much of Europe in season and from Barcelona, Palma and Madrid all year; ferries arrive from Barcelona, Valencia and Mallorca. Menorca is Spain — no formality for EU citizens, euro. A hire car is the practical choice for the beaches; in July and August, use the shuttle buses from Ciutadella and Ferreries to the southern calas, because the car parks fill and the access roads are closed once they do.

Eat the caldereta de llagosta, the lobster stew of Fornells, the Mahón cheese (a protected designation), sobrassada and the island's gin, Xoriguer, distilled since the British occupation of the eighteenth century and drunk with lemonade as a pomada. Bring walking shoes: the best calas are a half-hour walk from the nearest road, which is exactly why they are still good.

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