Palma: Modernista facades and the Olivar market: a self-guided walk
By Alleytale
Modernista facades and the Olivar market
The Saturday market moved from the Plaça del Mercat to the Plaça Major in 1868, the walls came down in the early 1900s, and Modernista buildings by Domènech i Montaner, Roca i Simó and Bennàssar went up across Palma. The Olivar market was built in 1951.
The stops
This arcaded square stands on the site of the convent of Sant Felip Neri and some neighbouring houses, and until 1823 it was the seat of the Inquisition. Once that building was pulled down, ten years passed before work began on the first wing, which was finished in 1838, and building went on well into the 20th century. From 1868 the city's market was held here on Saturdays, until 1951, when the Olivar market was built and the Saturday market moved to the Avinguda de Gabriel Alomar.
Photo: José Luis Filpo Cabana — CC BY 3.0 Saint Michael's stands where a mosque stood, one that was already used as a Christian temple in 1229, during the Conquest. By one account, on 31 December 1229, as a consecrated Christian church, it could host the first Mass held inside the walls. The Gothic doorway, from the end of the 14th century and credited to the sculptor Pere de Sant Joan, carries a figure of Ramon Llull at the upper left, and the Gothic bell tower is also kept. The legend says the church is dedicated to the Archangel Michael because he was the patron of the Dominican friar Miquel de Fabra, the confessor of James I.
Photo: Enric — CC BY-SA 4.0 This corner building stands where the Avinguda del Comte de Sallent meets Carrer del 31 de Desembre, on the ring of avenues that follows the old road round the demolished walls. One page calls it one of the first buildings of the new city, in the Modernista style, and the architect Francesc Roca i Simó designed it in 1907 or 1908. Born in Palma in 1874, Roca is noted for the ornament of great quality in iron, ceramics and glass that this and his other early Palma works carry.
Photo: Pérez — CC BY-SA 4.0 The square began in the early 1900s, after the Calvet plan and the demolition of the wall, in front of the Renaissance gate called the Porta Pintada. The architect Gaspar Bennàssar designed its barometric column and stone benches in 1910, and the column still stands at the edge of the square. In 1914 the new square was named for Eusebi Estada i Sureda, the engineer who promoted the island's railway and the pulling down of the walls; it lost his name in October 1936, and a statue of King James stands at its centre.
Photo: Antekbojar — CC0 The market was built in 1951 on the Plaça de l'Olivar, where the earlier municipal supply market had stood. Gaspar Bennàssar first designed it in 1914, and Vicent Valls Gadea finished the design in 1941. In 1947 Gabriel Alomar and Enric Juncosa completed it as a single L-shaped hall, with façades in regional style adapted for lifts and hoists, two floors and a storage basement, with parking for 380 cars.
Photo: Enric — CC BY-SA 4.0 This old department store on Carrer Colom is a Modernista building of four floors, built around 1908 to a design by Gaspar Bennàssar, signed with Jaume Alenyà. It has wavy wrought-iron balcony rails, polychrome ceramics and rich floral decoration, and its iron columns let in wide glass windows to light the interior. At number 1 of the Plaça del Marquès del Palmer it shares the iron frame of its lower part with its neighbour Can Rei, and the polychrome ceramics of the Mallorcan La Roqueta factory stand out on the two early 20th-century Modernista buildings.
Photo: Enric — CC BY-SA 4.0 A public wall fountain stood here since time out of mind, fed by underground streams near the old bed of the Riera, the torrent diverted outside the walls in 1613. After the death of Santiago Rusiñol in 1931, the city had the municipal architect Guillem Forteza turn the spot into a stone niche with a bronze bust of the artist, unveiled on 11 August 1935. The bust moved to Son Armadans in 1951, and since 1964 the niche has held Nu, a stone nude by Jaume Mir.
Photo: Enric — CC BY-SA 4.0 Lluís Domènech i Montaner designed this hotel, which opened on 9 February 1903, with a façade ornamented with sculpture by Alfons Juyol; Joan Alsina i Arús directed the works. It made its own electricity for 450 light bulbs and had a lift and hot water. It closed in 1941, and since 1993 it has housed CaixaForum Palma, a cultural centre of the Fundació La Caixa.
Photo: Enric — CC BY-SA 4.0 Josep Casasayas Casajuana, owner of the Frasquet confectionery, commissioned these two Modernista buildings between 1908 and 1911 from the architects Francesc Roca i Simó and Guillem Reynés i Font. They were first planned as a guesthouse but became apartments, and in 1909 the council refused a plan to join them with a bridge over Carrer Santacília. The wavy façade is built of sandstone, iron and wood and sparely decorated with ferns, acanthus and butterflies. The square takes its name from the city's market, held here from Almoravid times until it moved to the Plaça Major in 1868.
Photo: Enric — CC BY-SA 4.0 In 1764 Miquel Vallès d'Almadrà, marquis of Solleric, had the old houses of Can Cifre pulled down to build this baroque palace. He grew rich from trade and from exporting the oil of his estates at Alaró to Puerto Rico, Havana and Marseille, and he won his title from Charles III. That the main front faces the Born, which had long been more a torrent bed than a promenade, is noted as a sign of modernity, and the town council has owned the house since 1975.
Photo: Enric — CC BY-SA 4.0 The Born runs from the Plaça de les Tortugues (Plaça de Joan Carles I) to the Plaça de la Reina, laid over the bed of the Riera, the torrent that once crossed the city centre before it was diverted outside the walls in 1613. By the 1920s the Born, the Plaça del Mercat and the Plaça de la Reina counted among the city's main green lungs. At the Plaça de la Reina end, in what are now the Joan Alcover gardens, the Mundial kiosk once stood: an iron building of 1924 with a Modernista look, a popular meeting place, pulled down in 1949.
Photo: Martin Furtschegger — CC BY 3.0
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