This Balearic Island Is Spain’s Most Thrilling Arts Vacation spot—This is The place to Store and Keep

Lengthy earlier than it grew to become a magnet for sun-seekers and super-yachts, Palma de Mallorca was one of many Mediterranean’s key buying and selling ports. Its deep, sheltered bay drew retailers and sailors from Europe and North Africa, fostering an change of cultures that’s mirrored within the metropolis’s hovering Gothic spires, Moorish patios, and Renaissance-era ramparts. Centuries later, the capital of Spain’s Balearic Islands stays a crossroads—however lately, it’s changing into identified for its crafts, purchasing, and galleries.

Town’s inventive calendar peaks every spring with Xtant, a multiday gathering of textile artists and makers based in 2020 by Madrid-based designer Kavita Parmar and Colombian vogue entrepreneur Marcella Echavarría. Greater than 80 craftspeople from 30 international locations arrange store in historic buildings—such because the Baroque Can Vivot palace—to show handwoven rugs, embroidered caftans, tie-dyed textiles, and different wares. There are additionally workshops led by artists specializing in conventional crafts, like esparto-grass weaving and roba de llengües, the island’s distinctive cloth, which is claimed to be based mostly on ikat types that arrived by way of the Silk Highway.

At perfumeries Arquinesia and Viti Vinci, the cabinets are lined with scents made with Balearic-foraged botanicals similar to fennel, orange, and bergamot. For ceramics, make your strategy to PK Studio, the place Italian architect turned artist Roberto Paparcone crafts minimalist vases and dinnerware—and invitations guests to attempt their hand on the pottery wheel themselves. 

Set in a Fifteenth-century palace, the bi-level Rialto Residing is the brainchild of Klas Käll, previously of the clothes model Gant, and his accomplice, Barbara Bergman. The idea store is stocked with homewares and breezy island vogue. Its design studio has additionally furnished the interiors of high Mallorca lodges, together with Richard Branson’s Son Bunyola. 

In 2001, Mallorcan designer Rosa Esteva opened her clothes retailer, Cortana, in Palma’s casco antiguo, or Outdated City, the place she showcased monochromatic attire, slouchy pants, and billowing blouses in breathable silk, cotton, and linen. Her new 6,500-square-foot flagship, opened this 12 months, builds on that basis with limited-edition collections, bridal put on, and tableware.

On the sting of the casco antiguo, Mallorcan designer Jaime Llambias runs his by-appointment showroom. He works with pure dyes and upcycled materials just like the island’s conventional linen-like drap (as soon as used for bedding and curtains) to create wearable but sculptural silhouettes, from wide-legged pleated trousers to A-line attire. Each piece is designed and tailor-made on website.

Within the coronary heart of the Outdated City is Pelaires, Spain’s longest-running modern gallery, established in 1969 and famously championed by Joan Miró. (The artist as soon as known as it “his gallery and that of his mates.”) Now helmed by the second technology of the founding household, Pelaires continues to highlight influential artists from Mallorca and past, together with Catalan painter Mònica Subidé and Cuban artist Carlos Garaicoa. 

A brief stroll away, the Spanish outpost of Germany’s Kewenig Gallery levels large-scale reveals by worldwide heavyweights, together with English sculptor Richard Lengthy and Korean conceptual artist Kimsooja, contained in the vaulted principal corridor of a Thirteenth-century chapel.

Top-of-the-line locations to get in contact with Palma’s artistic spirit is Portella, a brand new 14-room lodge. It’s in a Seventeenth-century palace that was as soon as the residence of Spanish painter Joaquín Torrents Lladó.

The property nonetheless appears like an artist’s residence: it’s scattered with treasures together with a Miró lithograph and customized lighting fixtures by Gordiola, a Mallorcan glassmaker based in 1719. The lodge overlooks the Tenth-century Arab baths, making it a perfect perch for taking within the metropolis’s civilization-spanning historical past, whereas nonetheless feeling the modern present operating via its streets.

A model of this story first appeared within the October 2025 concern of Journey + Leisure underneath the headline “Items of Palma.”