Pollença

There is an old distinction on this part of the island that visitors miss and locals never do: Pollença is the town, and Port de Pollença is the beach. They are seven kilometres and a whole temperament apart. Most people only ever see the port. The town — inland, in a fold of the Tramuntana foothills, medieval, and largely indifferent to tourism — is the one worth understanding.

Pollença is a working market town that happens to be beautiful, rather than a beautiful town that exists for visitors. Romans settled here two thousand years ago; their bridge still stands at the edge of town. The streets are cobbled, cypress-lined, spotlessly kept, and arranged around one of the best squares on the island. It has quietly become very upmarket — boutiques, design shops, gourmet delicatessens — without losing the Sunday-market, coffee-in-the-square rhythm that is the actual reason to be here.

The square, the steps, and the Sunday market

The Plaça Major is the heart of it — plane-tree shade, café tables, and the eighteenth-century church of Mare de Deu dels Angels with its rose window presiding over one end. Come on a Sunday morning, when the market fills the square with local produce, crafts and a genuine local crowd, and pair it with a long lunch at one of the square's tables. It is the quintessential Pollença day.

Rising from near the square are the 365 Calvari steps — one for each day of the year — flanked by cypresses and climbing to a small hilltop chapel with views to the coast and the Formentor peninsula beyond. Every Good Friday they are the stage for a torchlit procession, the Davallament, that is among the most moving things you can witness on the island. Above the town, the Puig de Maria sanctuary rewards a steeper walk with the widest panorama of the bay and the plain.

The festival worth planning around

If you can time it, come for La Patrona in early August — Pollença's great festival, culminating in a mock battle between Moors and Christians through the streets that re-enacts a sixteenth-century pirate raid, ending in fireworks. It is loud, late, and entirely authentic, the opposite of a staged tourist spectacle. The April wine fair, held in the Sant Domingo cloister, is the quieter, more civilised counterpart.

Where to stay

The address is Son Brull — a Relais & Châteaux five-star set in an eighteenth-century former monastery just outside town, surrounded by thirty-two hectares of its own vineyards, orchards and olive groves. Twenty-three rooms of understated, design-led calm, a serious spa cut into the old stone, an infinity pool, and a kitchen, 365, that cooks largely from the estate. It is one of the finest hotels on the island and the reason many guests base themselves in the north at all.

For those who want to be in the town itself, a handful of restored townhouse hotels sit within a few minutes of the square — the trade being old-stone character and walkable dining over Son Brull's seclusion and grounds. We match the two to how much the guest wants to be in the town versus above it.

Where to eat

Restaurant 365 at Son Brull is the gastronomic anchor — island-rooted, seasonal, estate-driven. In town, the better tables cluster around and just behind the Plaça Major; the square itself is for the long, unhurried lunch and the early-evening drink rather than the serious dinner. As ever, the good places book up in season, and the booking is the difference between eating well and eating where there's room.

When to come

Spring and autumn are Pollença at its best — the walking weather ideal, the square lively but not overrun, the surrounding country green. The north sits a few degrees cooler and greener than the south, a real advantage in the shoulders. Come in August only if you want La Patrona; otherwise the town is hot and at its busiest. Either way, give the town its own day rather than treating it as an afterthought to the beach — it is the better half of the pair.