Palma Old Town, street by street

Distance

44.9 km

Time

about 13 hours

Streets

319

Steps

22 streets with steps

Start point

La Seu

Short on time

Palma in one walk: 8 sights in a loop

Phone needed while walking

no

Works offline

yes

Expires

never

Landmarks

Sights in Palma: what I would eat first.

Landmarks are fruit. The bigger the sight, the bigger the bonus.

• La Seu 1,500 points

  The building every postcard of Palma is cropped around. To eat it I would need a few millennia, and I have them. Go inside when the sun is out. What the light does in there on two particular days of the year, I am not telling you.

• Es Baluard 500 points

  A great corner of the old city wall, thick enough that art lives in it now. I would have gone for the wall. The odd part is below, and what it was used for once, I am not telling you.

• Palau de l'Almudaina 500 points

  It is still the official residence of the King and Queen of Spain on the island, where they hold a reception every year, and an older fortress still shows in its shape. The walls look chewy. Look up at the top of the highest tower. What stands there, and what people say about it, I am not telling you.

• Parlament de les Illes Balears 500 points

  Look at the front on Carrer del Conquistador: modernist, and in no hurry at all. The lawmakers inside sit in a room that was built for something much livelier. What, I am not telling you.

• La Misericòrdia 250 points

  A long house that spent centuries taking in those nobody else looked after. Now it is a cultural centre, and the quiet comes free. There is a tree here worth the detour. How far it goes, I am not telling you.

• Mercat de l'Olivar 250 points

  The covered market, two floors of it, and the building in this town I respect most. Come hungry. What one of its bars will do with the shopping you just carried in, I am not telling you.

• Monti-sion 250 points

  A church front with so much stone going on that it looks like a pie crust, which is the highest praise I have. Look up over the entrance and work out who is standing on whom. Then mind the wind in Carrer del Vent beside it. Why it blows there, I am not telling you.

• Plaça de Cort 250 points

  The town hall square, and the point every main road on the island measures its kilometres from. I measure from lunch. Look at the long stone seat along the front of the town hall, and at the old tree in the square. Who sat on the one, and how old the other is, I am not telling you.

• Plaça Major 250 points

  A long, tidy rectangle with house fronts on every side: the most Castilian-looking square in this Mediterranean town, laid like a table. Stand in it and wonder what is under your shoes. Then come back in December. I am not telling you why on either count.

Eating

What to eat in Palma: actual food.

Palma has no single dish to hunt down. The island cooks out of its larder: the pig, the almond tree, the olive and the tomato, with bread under most of it. Look for those four on the plate, not for a showpiece.

Checked 20 October 2026.

Why here

Somebody stood here and decided.

On the plain behind the most sheltered shore of the Bay of Palma. The first, Roman town sat where the Almudaina quarter is now, inside a wall of its own, and its forum stood where Carrer de Sant Roc crosses Carrer de l'Estudi General. Both streets are on this walk, and they still meet in the same place. I would have put the forum next to a market. Nobody asked me.

Sources: Gran Enciclopèdia Catalana, Palma; Ajuntament de Palma, Història de la ciutat

Who ruled

Everyone who thought they owned this.

I outlasted all of them. It is the one thing I am good at.

902–1229

In 902 the Balearics joined the Umayyad emirate of Córdoba, and the Roman town took a new name: Madina Mayurqa. The governor 'Isam al-Khawlani rebuilt and enlarged the old enclosure and added mosques, public baths and inns. Early in the 11th century a new wall took in a much bigger town, the one the city now calls its Ciutat Antiga. Baths and inns first. Somebody had their priorities straight.

Sources: Ajuntament de Palma, Història de la ciutat; Gran Enciclopèdia Catalana, Palma

1229–1343

In 1229 Jaume I of Catalonia-Aragon arrived and took the city. A Kingdom of Mallorca was created, Madina Mayurqa became simply the City of Mallorca, and the city's own history dates the roots of today's Mallorcan society to that moment. The kingdom ended in 1343, when Pere III the Ceremonious took the island.

Sources: Ajuntament de Palma, Història de la ciutat; Ajuntament de Palma, Cròniques de Palma (Bartomeu Bestard, official chronicler) p. 210; Gran Enciclopèdia Catalana, Palma

1715–

In 1715 the Bourbon king Philip V took over, and his Nova Planta decrees replaced the old kingdom's institutions. The capital got its Roman name back for good, and a town council, the Ajuntament de Palma, in place of the old Great and General Council. It still runs the city. I have never run anything but out of snacks.

Sources: Ajuntament de Palma, Història de la ciutat; Gran Enciclopèdia Catalana, Palma

Three facts

Three things I know about this place.

1. Many of the grand houses keep a courtyard, a pati, behind the front door. Until mass tourism they were half public, and many can still be seen through the grilles of the doorway. Look in, do not go in. The grille is the menu, not the meal.

   Sources: Ajuntament de Palma, Cròniques de Palma (Bartomeu Bestard, official chronicler) p. 132

2. La Rambla and the Passeig del Born were a stream bed. The torrent sa Riera came in through the wall, ran down La Rambla and on to the Born. In 1613 work began to send it round outside the walls, the old bed inside was filled with earth, and the Born turned into a wide promenade. A stream bed turned into a promenade. I would simply have waited for it to dry up.

   Sources: Ajuntament de Palma, Cròniques de Palma (Bartomeu Bestard, official chronicler) p. 11; Gran Enciclopèdia Catalana, Palma

3. On Carrer de l'Almudaina an old arch still stands over the street: a gate of the old city wall. The city's own history calls it a gate of the first, Roman town; the Catalan encyclopedia counts it among the few things left of the Islamic city. The historians disagree, and the arch is not saying. I asked.

   Sources: Ajuntament de Palma, Història de la ciutat; Gran Enciclopèdia Catalana, Palma; Mallorca Magazin, Auf einer Zeitreise über Mallorca

Counted from the streets in the level itself, not from a guidebook.

• 319streets
• 2,229dots
• 36.0km of street
• 44.9km on foot
• 13hours at a stroll