Pati del Centre Cultural la Misericordia

Charity built it: the old Casa de la Misericòrdia in Palma began as a hospice for the destitute and has ended as a cultural centre run by the island council, with libraries and archives behind its walls. Its courtyard — the pati — is the part that matters in summer: an enclosed stone rectangle open to the Mallorcan sky, where chamber and orchestral concerts are given in the cool of the evening, the walls doing the work that a shell would otherwise have to do.