Ciutadella, Menorca's old capital: cathedral to Plaça des Born: a self-guided walk
By Alleytale
Noble palaces and the arcades
After the Turkish raid of 1558 Ciutadella rebuilt behind its walls, and in the 17th and 18th centuries it filled with palaces and churches. The walk follows that town from the cathedral through the arches of Ses Voltes and the market square to a surviving bastion, then down to the nobles' palace and the civic buildings around the Born.
The stops
King Alfonso III of Aragon conquered Menorca in 1287 and ordered a church built on the site of an old mosque; work began in 1300 and ended in 1362, in the Catalan Gothic style. The west front is neoclassical, rebuilt in 1813 under Bishop Juano, while the Gothic side door, the Porta de la Llum, keeps some of its medieval carving. Arches from the mosque still serve as the base of the bell tower, and the cathedral bells still toll slowly at dusk, as they did to warn that the city gates were closing.
Photo: Fernando — CC BY-SA 4.0 This arcaded street runs from the cathedral square to Plaça Nova and takes its name from the arches along it; in the first stretch they stand on one side only. Among the arches is the old Llabrés pharmacy, which closed in 1983 and is one of the few traces of modernism on Menorca, its main jewel the stained-glass windows of the former laboratory. On a concrete column in the street, a small bronze ram stands for the town's festivals.
Photo: Menorquino — CC BY-SA 3.0 es The church of the Socors convent is one of the town's main liturgical centres, a Renaissance church with a single nave, two side chapels, a barrel vault and a dome over the crossing, set beside the cloister. Its baroque organ, finished in the late 1790s by the Catalan builder Josep Casas, sits in a case carved by the sculptor Josep Comas i Ramon. Parts of the organ were dismantled in 1939 and it decayed, until a rebuild was decided on in 1998 and entrusted to the organ builder Albert Blancafort; it was completed in 2004.
Photo: Josep Renalias (Lohen11) — CC BY-SA 4.0 Locals call this square the Plaça des Mercat, and the produce market held here sells local cheeses, sausages, honey, bread, fruit, vegetables, meat and fish. A Menorca guide describes the square as the only example of 19th-century iron architecture that has survived on the island. Facing it is the Mercat des Peix, whose stalls sell fresh seafood.
Photo: rene boulay — CC BY-SA 3.0 Ses Voltes ends at this square, where a bronze statue honours Rafael Oleo i Quadrado, a pharmacist, botanist and historian born in Ciutadella in 1806. His two-volume Historia de la Isla de Menorca, printed in 1874 and 1876, was the first history printed on the island, and in 1859 he published an inventory of its plants. Ciutadella named him an illustrious son in 1951, gave a street his name, and he drew up the project for the obelisk in Plaça des Born.
Photo: Alzinous — CC BY-SA 4.0 After the conquest of 1287 Ciutadella's walls got five bastions to guard five gates, the Turkish attack of 1558 destroyed at least part of the walls, and the present bastion was built for defence between 1677 and 1692, with a massive outer face that has almost no openings. It lost its military role in 1869, and later held a gas factory, from 1902, and a cistern whose pipes fed the town's first public fountain, in 1925. From 1995 to 2018 it housed the Museu Municipal, and it is one of only two bastions of the old walls that survive.
Photo: Enfo — CC BY-SA 4.0 This is the palace of the counts of Torre Saura, a title Ferdinand VII created in 1818 for Bernardo de Olives y de Olives, and the house is also known as Cas Comte. Work began in 1839 on the reform of an existing building, to plans drawn by Ramón Gelabert and the military engineer Ildefonso Hernández, and the palace covers about 6,000 square metres behind two neoclassical facades. Archduke Luis Salvador called it the most beautiful mansion on Menorca.
Photo: Josep Renalias (Lohen11) — CC BY-SA 4.0 The Teatre des Born was built between 1873 and 1875 on the site of an old cavalry barracks, and opened on 10 November 1875. Its architect, Ramon Cavaller Gelabert, drew on Barcelona theatres, above all the Teatre Romea. The Cercle Artístic de Ciutadella, founded in 1881, bought the theatre and built its headquarters beside it, and the theatre reopened on 23 October 2020 after fourteen years closed.
Photo: Color sépia — Public domain The town hall stands on the site of the old Governor's Palace, which began as the Moorish Alcàsser and was handed to the town council in 1865. The present building is by the architect Enric Sagnier, built between 1897 and 1925, with a sober design in which the arcades on the ground floor and the main staircase inside stand out. Behind it is the Governor's bastion, one of the two bastions of the old walls that survive.
Photo: Américo Toledano — CC BY-SA 4.0 The 22-metre obelisk at the centre of the square, nicknamed sa Piràmide, was built in 1857 to mark three centuries since the Turkish raid of 9 July 1558, when the town was sacked and burned and more than three thousand survivors from the town and its surroundings were taken to Constantinople to be sold as slaves. Its inscription says, in Latin, that here the townspeople held out for altar and hearth until death. Around the square stand the Torre-Saura palace, the Teatre des Born, the town hall and the Palau Salort.
Photo: Américo Toledano — CC BY-SA 4.0
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