Palma de Mallorca

Palma de Mallorca sails a Gothic cathedral at the sea. La Seu rises straight from the bay wall — sandstone gold over the water, one of Europe's tallest naves — and its interior holds two modern astonishments: Gaudí's wrought-iron baldachin and lighting reforms, and Miquel Barceló's ceramic chapel, a tidal wave of clay fish and loaves covering the Sant Pere apse: seven centuries of Mediterranean imagination under one vault. Behind it, the old town's patios and the Arab baths recall Madina Mayurqa; the round castle of Bellver — Europe's rare circular Gothic fortress — watches from its pinewood; Miró's studios keep his late constellations where he chose to work and die.

The island's musical winter is legend: Chopin and George Sand's stay at Valldemossa's charterhouse gave the Preludes their raindrop myth, and Palma repays the debt with a serious concert culture — the Orquestra Simfònica de les Illes Balears, the resident symphony documented in the concert record, plays its seasons for the capital, and the record's second address is the courtyard of La Misericordia, the old almshouse's patio, where summer concerts take the island air. Ensaimadas dust the mornings; the lonja's merchant Gothic proves the sea once paid for everything. A cathedral with a surf view, a symphony with an island: Palma anchors beauty offshore of the continent.