Palma

Overview

Palma is the capital of the Balearic Islands and the only place on Mallorca that works as a full city rather than a resort, with 438,234 residents and a Gothic cathedral standing directly on the water. Almost half of everyone who lives on Mallorca lives here. Ferries, flights, island buses and island trains all converge here, which is why most people pass through and few stay. Two nights is the minimum that makes sense.

The shape of the place is easy to read. A dense medieval core sits behind the seafront on rising ground, the port and its promenade run west from below the cathedral, and modern residential Palma fans out north and east onto the flat farmland of Es Pla. The Serra de Tramuntana closes the horizon to the north and west.

The 14th century was the good century. Palma shared the capital of the Kingdom of Mallorca with Perpignan, traded with Catalonia, Valencia, Provence, the Maghreb and the Italian republics, and produced the cartographers of the Majorcan school, among them Abraham Cresques, credited with the Catalan Atlas. Nearly every building worth queueing for today was begun in that window.

Mass tourism from the 1950s onwards rebuilt the city’s economy and pulled in workers from mainland Spain and, more recently, from Africa and South America. What is left is a working capital under a heavy seasonal overlay.

Catalan is the language of the city, in its Mallorcan form, alongside Castilian. Street signs, market stalls and bus stops use Catalan spellings, which is why the same square turns up as Plaça d’Espanya and Plaza de España depending on who printed the map. English is normal in anything tourist-facing and much less so three streets inland. For visas, currency and the rest of the country-wide basics, see the Spain guide; for how Palma fits against Menorca, Ibiza and Formentera, see the Balearic Islands.

Neighbourhoods

Palma is administratively split into five districts and 89 barris, and in 2026 the old Llevant district was cut back while Platja de Palma was enlarged and renamed Platja de Palma i Pla de Sant Jordi. Visitors realistically use about eight of them.

The old town

The historic quarter sits southeast of the centre, behind and above the cathedral, and most of its lanes are too narrow for traffic. Formally it is several barris rather than one: La Seu around the cathedral, Sa Calatrava on the eastern slope, Monti-sion, Sant Nicolau, Cort around the town hall and Puig de Sant Pere just inland of the walls. The dominant building type is the merchant or noble townhouse built around an interior courtyard, and the centre still holds a dense cluster of them.

La Llonja and the Born

The barri of La Llonja-Born fills the strip between the old town and the harbour, taking its name from the 15th century merchants’ exchange on the waterfront. It is the most concentrated eating and drinking quarter in the centre and the most obviously reshaped by tourism. Es Baluard, the contemporary art museum, sits on a bastion of the old city wall at the western end, on the Plaça de la Porta de Santa Catalina.

Santa Catalina and El Jonquet

Cross the Passeig Mallorca and you are in Santa Catalina, a Ponent district barri that was a fishermen’s and workers’ quarter and is now the city’s busiest food neighbourhood, built on a grid of low two and three storey houses. El Jonquet, the small barri on the bluff above the marina at its seaward edge, keeps a row of old windmill towers. Ten minutes on foot from the Born, and the price of a coffee drops noticeably.

The western coast road

West of the port, the Ponent barris run along the shore and up into the hills: Portopí by the naval base, El Terreno, Son Armadams, La Bonanova on the slope, Gènova above it, and Cala Major further out. Hotels, apartment blocks and a couple of small beaches, all within a 20 to 45 minute bus ride of the centre. EMT lines 46 and 47 climb from Sindicat and the Plaça d’Espanya to Gènova and La Bonanova; line 1 runs along the seafront to Portopí and Cala Major; line 4 goes to Ses Illetes.

Pere Garau and the eastern grid

Inland to the east are the Llevant barris where most of Palma actually lives: Pere Garau, Foners, Hostalets, Son Gotleu, Rafal Vell and Rafal Nou. Twentieth century apartment blocks, neighbourhood markets, no monuments. No reason to make a special trip, but if your room is out here the bus back in takes 15 minutes and you will eat for less.

The bay and the beach strip

East of the centre the city runs along the water through Can Pere Antoni and El Molinar to Es Coll d’en Rabassa, then out past the airport to Can Pastilla, Les Meravelles and L’Arenal, all now in the Platja de Palma i Pla de Sant Jordi district. The far end is package-holiday Mallorca at full volume; the near end, El Molinar, is a former fishing quarter with a seafront walk and a sailing club.

See & do

La Seu and the palace beside it

The cathedral is the one thing in Palma nobody should skip, and it has its own guide here: Palma Cathedral. In short: begun on the site of the main mosque in 1229, worked on until the 17th century, restored by Antoni Gaudí from 1903 until he walked out in 1914, and given a new chapel by the Mallorcan artist Miquel Barceló between 2001 and 2006. The east rose window is nearly 14 metres across, the second largest Gothic rose window anywhere.

Directly opposite stands the Palau de l’Almudaina, the royal palace, still one of the official residences of the Spanish royal family and run by Patrimonio Nacional. It was an Arab fortress known as the Zuda until James II of Majorca began rebuilding it as a palace in 1305; the Great Hall, St Anne’s Chapel and the baths all date from the works of 1309 to 1314.

Sa Llotja and the medieval trade town

Sa Llotja, the merchants’ exchange on the waterfront, was built by Guillem Sagrera between 1420 and 1452 as the seat of the Col·legi de Mercaders, and it is the best piece of civil Gothic architecture on the island. It opens for temporary exhibitions rather than on a fixed museum timetable, so check before you make a trip of it. Next door on the passeig Sagrera is the Consolat de Mar, once the maritime commercial court.

Churches beyond the cathedral

Sant Francesc, begun around 1280, is a convent complex of church, cloister and attached buildings, and the cloister is the reason to go. Santa Eulàlia, in the old centre, is where James II was crowned king of Mallorca on 12 September 1276. Sant Miquel, Gothic and Baroque, counts as the oldest church in the city and one of its first four.

Art museums

Es Baluard is the main contemporary museum, opened on 30 January 2004 inside a restored bastion of the city wall, with a collection of more than 700 works weighted towards artists connected to the Balearics. It opens Tuesday to Saturday 10:00 to 20:00 and Sunday 10:00 to 15:00, closed Mondays, with the ticket desk shutting 30 minutes early.

The Fundació Miró Mallorca occupies Joan Miró’s own studios and house at Son Abrines in Cala Major, about 4 km west of the centre. Winter hours, from 16 September to 15 May, are Tuesday to Saturday 10:00 to 18:00 and Sunday 10:00 to 15:00; in summer it stays open to 19:00. General admission is 10 euros, 6.50 reduced, free under 16, and free for everyone on Saturdays from 15:00 and on the first Sunday of each month from 10:00 to 15:00.

The Palau March, next to the cathedral, was begun in 1939, opened in 1945 and now holds the Fundació Bartolomé March art collection; the Fundació Joan March runs a separate contemporary art museum on the carrer de Sant Miquel, and the Museu de Mallorca and Museu Diocesà cover archaeology and religious art. CaixaForum Palma occupies the Grand Hotel, a modernista building by Lluís Domènech i Montaner finished in 1903.

Bellver and the hill

Bellver Castle stands on a wooded hill 3 km west of the centre and is the only round medieval castle in Spain. Built for James II between 1300 and 1311, it served as a royal residence, then as a military prison from the 18th century into the 20th, and since 1932 as the city’s history museum. The view over the bay is the main event; the surrounding pine woods are a public park, and on the Sunday after Easter the city walks up for the Diumenge de l’Àngel.

Squares, and one oddity

Plaça Major was cut in the 19th century on the site of the demolished Convent de Sant Felip Neri, and the carrer de Sant Miquel and carrer de Colom both start from it; Plaça de Cort, two minutes south, holds the town hall. Both are heavily walked and heavily busked. For something stranger, the Poble Espanyol in Son Espanyolet is a 1960s assembly of replica Spanish village architecture by Fernando Chueca Goitia.

Leaving town

The Serra de Tramuntana, a UNESCO World Heritage site, begins where the city’s northern and western suburbs stop, and the classic half day out of Palma is the narrow gauge train up to Sóller. Island buses from the Estació Intermodal reach Valldemossa, Port de Sóller and Andratx, and trains run to Inca, Sa Pobla and Manacor, the last within reach of the Coves del Drach.

Food & drink

Start with the municipal markets, which are where the city buys food and increasingly where it eats lunch. The Mercat de l’Olivar, on the Plaça de l’Olivar between the Plaça d’Espanya and the carrer de Sant Miquel, has been running since 1951 and opens Monday to Friday 07:00 to 14:30, with a partial afternoon opening until 20:00, and Saturday 07:00 to 15:00; the food stalls serve until 16:00 and the whole thing is shut on Sundays. Fish, cheese, cured meat, and counters where you eat standing up.

The one pastry to know is the ensaïmada, a coiled Mallorcan bread made with strong flour, eggs, sugar and saïm, a reduced pork lard that gives it the name; the first written references date to the 17th century. Plain is llisa; the common fillings are cabell d’àngel, candied pumpkin strands, and crema, an egg custard. Bakeries sell them boxed in a flat octagonal carton designed to survive a flight home.

Sobrassada is the island’s other signature: a raw cured sausage of minced pork and pork bacon with paprika, salt and black pepper, hung to cure in the humid mild cold of the late Balearic autumn. Ask for dolça or coent depending on whether you want the cayenne version; the thin ones are llonganissa, the fat ones cular, and the giant ones cured in a pork bladder are called bisbe, bishop. It is spread on bread, not sliced.

For a full plate, tumbet is the standard vegetable dish: layers of potato, aubergine and red pepper fried separately in olive oil, topped with tomato cooked down with garlic and parsley, served either alone or under fish or meat. It turns up on almost every island menu and it is the reliable vegetarian option in places that otherwise have none.

Island wine is worth ordering by the glass where it exists. The Pla i Llevant denominación de origen, created in 2001 and covering 18 municipalities in the east and centre of Mallorca, is the one you will see most often on Palma lists, on land that has grown vines since the Roman period. Plenty of bars carry mainland bottles instead, so read the label rather than assuming.

Kitchens close between lunch and dinner, and in summer nobody sits down outside before the stone stops radiating heat; if you want a hot meal at 17:00 you will be looking for a long time.

When to go

May, June, September and early October are the months that work. Palma’s annual average is 18.5 °C with roughly 2,800 hours of sun a year, so the shoulder seasons deliver warm days without the August problem, and the sea holds its heat well past the equinox. Beach weather around Mallorca normally lasts six to seven months, from late April to early November, with a mean sea temperature of 19.5 °C.

July and August are hot, crowded and expensive. August averages a high of 30.2 °C and a low of 23.0 °C, which means the nights do not cool down much, and the city has never recorded 40 °C in any summer month since records began in 1978. The heat is bearable; the queues at the cathedral on a three-ship cruise day are less so.

Autumn is the wet season, with occasional heavy rain and storms, though the total is modest: the airport weather station records about 460 litres per square metre a year. September brings the city’s best cultural night. Nit de l’Art, first held in September 1997 when the gallery owners Pep Pinya and Xavier Fiol persuaded Palma’s galleries to open until midnight, made Palma the first European city to run an art night; the 2026 edition, its 30th, runs on 19 September from 18:00 to 23:00 with its hub on the Plaça de l’Olivar and free guided tours in several languages.

Winter is mild rather than warm. January averages a high of 15.7 °C and a low of 8.5 °C, freezes are almost unknown, and the only sub-zero reading the port has recorded is minus 0.1 °C in February 2012. Hotel rates fall, terraces still catch the sun at lunch, and the city reverts to its residents. Easter week brings processions from Palm Sunday to Good Friday, the largest being the Crist de la Sang on Maundy Thursday, which has left the Església de la Sang since the 16th century and now ends at the cathedral. On 31 December the city marks the Diada de Mallorca with a mass and a reading of Pere Penya’s poem La Colcada, commemorating James I and the conquest.

Getting there

By air

Palma de Mallorca Airport, still widely called Son Sant Joan, sits 8 km east of the city next to the village of Can Pastilla and handled 33.3 million passengers in 2024, making it the third busiest airport in Spain after Madrid and Barcelona and the fourteenth in Europe. It is Air Europa’s main base and a focus airport for Eurowings, easyJet, Jet2.com, Ryanair and Vueling. Year-round it has daily links to Madrid and Barcelona plus the other island airports; between May and October it fills with northern European charter and low-cost traffic.

Two EMT city bus lines link the airport with Palma and with the beach strip at Platja de Palma, and the TIB regional network runs direct services from the terminal to the main resorts around the island. Airport bus route 1 goes to the city centre and the port every 15 to 20 minutes for 5.00 euros, running from about 06:00 until 01:10 in winter and 01:50 in summer; route 21 covers El Arenal every half hour at the same fare, finishing at 22:10 in winter and 00:30 in summer.

Airport to centre	Time	Frequency	Fare
Bus route 1	20 to 30 min	every 15 to 20 min	5.00 euros
Bus route 21 (El Arenal)	25 to 35 min	every 30 min	5.00 euros
Taxi	15 to 20 min	on demand	metered

By sea

The Port of Palma is the largest in the Balearics and runs from the Moll Vell, in front of the Parc de la Mar, west to the Dic de l’Oest by the Portopí barri. Scheduled passenger ferries use the two marine stations at the Moll de Peraires, with regular sailings to Barcelona, Valencia, Ibiza and Maó; cruise ships normally berth at the Dic de l’Oest, which has a third terminal.

By rail and road

There is no rail link to the mainland, so every train journey to Palma ends at a port or an airport somewhere else. Once you are here, both of Palma’s terminal stations sit on the Plaça d’Espanya and are run by two different operators: the TIB island network underground at the Estació Intermodal, and the Ferrocarril de Sóller in its own building next to the park. Mallorca’s main roads all converge on the city, and since 1990 the Via de Cintura ring motorway has carried through traffic around the built-up area.

Getting around

On foot, and when not to be

The old town, the Born, La Llonja and Santa Catalina are one continuous walk, mostly flat, mostly car-free. Everything else needs a bus. The urban network is run by the EMT, the council-owned transport company, which also serves parts of Marratxí, Calvià and Llucmajor. A single EMT fare inside the city is 2.00 euros. Most routes pass through the Plaça d’Espanya or Sindicat.

The Estació Intermodal

Everything that leaves Palma for the rest of Mallorca leaves from under the Plaça d’Espanya. The Estació Intermodal is open 05:30 to 01:30 every day, has an information point, left luggage, toilets, cafés and a supermarket, and its phone number is 971 177 777. Island buses run from here to Port de Sóller, Valldemossa, Andratx, Magaluf, Inca, Manacor, Cala Rajada and the rest; the trains are T1 to Inca, T2 to Sa Pobla and T3 to Manacor.

TIB fares work on zone hops, from 0 to a maximum of 4, no journey ever costs more than the 4-hop fare, and a bank card or the Targeta Única buys two transfers across three lines within 60 minutes; the zone system does not apply to Palma’s urban buses or to the Sóller train. Buying from the driver is cash only, notes up to 20 euros, valid on that line alone.

Metro

The Palma Metro is one 9.9 km line, the M1, with ten stations running from Palma Intermodal at the Plaça d’Espanya out to the University of the Balearic Islands and, since 2 July 2025, one stop further to Parc Bit. Useful for the university and the northern business parks, useless for sightseeing.

The Sóller train

The other station on the square runs the best journey on the island. The Ferrocarril de Sóller is an electrified narrow gauge line built from 1911 on the profits of the orange and lemon trade, climbing north across the plain and through 13 tunnels in the Serra de Tramuntana to Sóller. In 2026 a single costs 23 euros and a return 30; adding the Sóller tram down to the port costs 10 euros more on a return, against 10 euros each way bought on board.

Taxis and bikes

Palma runs a fleet of 1,246 taxis, all air conditioned and all white since a municipal decree of 15 October 1999 ended the black and ivory livery they had worn for 50 years. Ranks are the easy option outside the airport, the port and the Plaça d’Espanya; in August, phoning or using an app beats waiting.

BiciPalma is the council’s public bike scheme, with docking points around the city. The seafront and the Passeig Marítim are the comfortable riding; the old town is not, and neither is the climb to Gènova.

Where to stay

Where to base yourself

For a first visit, stay inside or immediately around the old town. Everything except Bellver and the Miró foundation is within a 20 minute walk, the streets are pedestrian, and you can eat at 22:00 without planning a bus home. The core also carries the highest rates in the city, partly because the buildings themselves are the product: converted merchant houses built around interior courtyards.

Santa Catalina, immediately west across the Passeig Mallorca, is the obvious alternative: the same walking distance to the Born, more apartments than hotels, and the densest concentration of places to eat. The western coast barris, El Terreno, Son Armadams, Portopí and Cala Major, put you on the sea with a 20 to 40 minute bus ride into town on EMT lines 1, 4, 46 and 47.

The beach end

Can Pastilla, Les Meravelles and L’Arenal, east of the airport, are where the large package hotels are, and they are a different holiday from the city: purpose-built, seasonal, and busy with northern European tour groups since the 1950s, when the first hotels at Playa de Palma started taking organised German groups. They are cheap in April and October and packed in August. If you want beach plus city, El Molinar and Can Pere Antoni are the compromise: on the water, ten minutes from the centre, no resort infrastructure.

What to check before booking

Air conditioning, first. August averages a high of 30.2 °C and a low of 23.0 °C, so a room without it in an old stone building is a bad night. Then the lift, in any pre-20th century building. Then, if you are here between November and February, which way the room faces: the old town’s lanes are narrow enough that some rooms see no direct sun at all in winter, when the average January high is 15.7 °C and the terraces that do catch the light fill up fast.

Rates track the season hard: high summer, Easter week and the Sant Sebastià weekend in January are the pinch points, and November to March is when the city is cheapest and a fair number of beach-strip hotels simply close.

Practical info

Tourist offices

Palma runs four municipal tourist information offices, all reachable on 902 102 365 and palmainfo@palma.cat. The two most useful are OIT Parc de la Mar, on the Avinguda Antoni Maura below the cathedral, and OIT Estacions in the Parc de les Estacions by the Plaça d’Espanya; both open Monday to Sunday 09:00 to 17:00. There is a fourth at the Plaça de les Meravelles on the beach strip, and one at the Moll Pelaires that opens 09:00 to 17:00 on cruise days only.

Beaches and swimming

The city sits on the second largest bay in Spain and counts five fully equipped beaches plus eight smaller swimming areas within the municipality. The equipped ones are on the eastern strip; the swimming areas are the rocky inlets along the coast in both directions. Sea temperature averages 19.5 °C across the year and the swimming season normally runs from late April to early November.

Hours that will catch you out

The markets close early: the Mercat de l’Olivar shuts at 14:30 on weekdays with only a partial afternoon reopening, at 15:00 on Saturdays, and all day Sunday. Museums mostly close on Mondays, including Es Baluard and the Fundació Miró Mallorca. The Estació Intermodal is the exception that keeps long hours, 05:30 to 01:30 daily, which matters for early flights.

Driving and parking

Do not rent a car for the city itself. The centre is pedestrianised or one-way, and the Via de Cintura ring road exists precisely to keep through traffic out of the built-up area. If you do drive in, the practical car parks for the old town are the Parc de la Mar below the cathedral, Passeig Mallorca on the western edge and Via Roma in the centre. Pick the car up on the day you leave the city, not the day you arrive.

Everything country-wide, plugs, tap water, pharmacies, emergency numbers and tipping, is covered in the Spain guide and not repeated here.