Dalt Vila, Eivissa: the Renaissance walls: a self-guided walk
By Alleytale
The Renaissance walls of Dalt Vila
Between 1554 and 1585 two Italian engineers, Giovanni Battista Calvi and Jacobo Paleazzo Fratin, built new fortifications around Eivissa's upper town, and the walk follows their bastions along with the older story of the Catalan conquest of 1235, the cathedral and the people who recorded the island's past.
The stops
This is the main entrance to Dalt Vila and to its Renaissance walls. Its name refers to the taules, the planks that served as the drawbridge defending the town, and a drawbridge once separated the upper town from the rest of the city. Two Roman statues flank the gate.
Photo: Mnmamare — CC BY 4.0 A statue on Carrer de sa Carrossa honours Isidor Macabich (1883-1973), a popular Ibizan priest and historian. He was ordained in 1907, became canon archivist in 1913 and in 1934 the town's official chronicler, and he was one of the founders of the Institut d'Estudis Eivissencs. His Historia de Ibiza, which he began in instalments in 1935, came out in four volumes in 1966 and 1967.
Photo: Syrcro — CC BY-SA 3.0 The Consell d'Eivissa's walking route along the walls calls this building the former Sala de Armas, the armoury, and from the museum's vaulted room, once casemates, you look out over the main gate and the Sa Penya quarter. Work to enlarge the museum kept it closed from 2007 to 2012 and turned up remains from the 7th century BC, the oldest found in Ibiza, and part of the museum now shows them. Its permanent collection is contemporary art made on the islands in the 1960s.
Photo: fnogues from Eivissa — CC BY-SA 2.0 Sant Pere fills the north-west corner of the walls and was one of the most complicated bastions to build, because the ground drops steeply there; a tower-shaped projection protects the way into the Portal Nou. UNESCO says Giovanni Battista Calvi and Jacobo Paleazzo Fratin, two Italian engineers, built the new fortifications between 1554 and 1585 to defend communications between Spain and Italy. A 2003 report says the bastion had housed a discotheque and that in the 1970s it held an open-air party venue that put on concerts, before the city set out to restore it.
Photo: Ben — CC BY-SA 2.0 Sant Jaume is one of the two bastions the city has turned into museums, showing how the Renaissance wall was built and the military technology of the time. The town archaeologist said that all the water piping used to run through its two casemates, which left them badly damaged. The restored casemates opened on 7 May 2008 with an exhibition on warfare in Calvi's day, including a panel on firing angles and loopholes and schematic cannons.
Photo: Charles from Port Chester, New York — CC BY 2.0 This small chapel on Carrer de Sant Ciriac was built in 1754 and is tied to 8 August 1235, the day Eivissa passed into Catalan hands, which is also when Saint Cyriac, the town's patron since 1650, is commemorated. The story goes that the Christian soldiers entered the town through a secret passage here, guided by a brother with a grudge against the Muslim sheikh. Each 8 August a procession stops at the chapel, and people toss coins into the sketched arch for luck.
Photo: Joan Gené — CC BY-SA 4.0 A parish of Saint Mary was one of the first things the Catalan conquerors promised to found, and it was established when Ibiza fell on 8 August 1235; Catalan Wikipedia adds that the church went up on the site of the old mosque of Yebisah. The Consell's route says its first Gothic building was later reworked in baroque style, and the exterior stays severe, with robust buttresses. The medieval church became the island's cathedral in 1817.
Photo: Leon petrosyan — CC BY-SA 4.0 Sant Bernat belongs to the first Renaissance fortification project of the engineer Giovanni Battista Calvi, six bastions in all, though its name has changed over the centuries. The Consell d'Eivissa's walking route points out the view from here over the sea, with the island of Formentera on the horizon.
Photo: fnogues — CC BY-SA 2.0 The Consell's route sends you from Plaça d'Espanya up to Es Revellí, where a recumbent statue lies of Guillem de Montgrí, archbishop-elect of Tarragona, who led the Catalan conquest of Ibiza in 1235. The press describes it as a reproduction of the recumbent figure on his tomb, whose elements are in Girona cathedral, and places it at the lookout of the old town hall. Catalan Wikipedia adds that a replica of the tomb was made for the church of the Ibiza convent and moved to the town hall's lookout in 1970. Es Revellí is a half bastion also designed by Fratín, which closed the walled enclosure on the side facing the Soto and Els Molins.
Photo: Charles from Port Chester, New York — CC BY 2.0 The Dominican convent here was founded at the end of the 16th century, and its baroque church was built between the 16th and 17th centuries. In the 19th century, after the Mendizábal disentailment of 1835 affected the convent, a new administrative centre was created in it and the town hall was installed there. Some town hall offices still work from the old convent.
Photo: Rgg 1977 — CC BY-SA 3.0 es Fratín designed this bastion in 1575. It was not part of the original fortification project, but it was built because the burg of Santa Llúcia had to be brought inside the walls. The Consell's route calls it the second largest bastion, and its map text one of the largest, with an asymmetrical plan, and on it stands Es Polvorí, a thick-walled rectangular store that held the gunpowder and munitions for the town's artillery and which the Consell's route says is now an exhibition room; from up on the bastion you look over La Marina and the harbour.
Photo: Chixoy — CC BY-SA 3.0
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