Four hundred years in the building, raised on the site of the great mosque of Madina Mayurqa, and reordered inside by Antoni Gaudí between 1904 and 1915. Twice a year the sun throws its rose window onto the opposite wall.
At a glance
- Dedication
- Santa María — the Virgin Mary
- First documents
- 1230; the building as we know it begun under James II (1276–1311)
- Completed
- Works ended in the 1630s
- Rose window
- External diameter 11.85 m, 1,115 panes of glass
- Gaudí
- Interior reordering, 1904–1915
- Location
- Plaza de la Almoina, beside the Almudaina palace and the harbour
Overview
La Seu stands on the seafront terrace of Palma, so close to the water that its buttressed south flank is the first thing seen from an arriving ship. It is dedicated to the Virgin Mary. Sant Sebastià, whose name is sometimes attached to the cathedral, is the patron saint of the city of Palma, declared in 1634 — a different thing altogether.
After the conquest of Madina Mayurqa in 1229, James I ordered the former great mosque consecrated to the Virgin for Christian worship. The first documents on the fabric date from 1230, when bishop Pere de Morella consecrated the altar stone. The building visible today was begun under James II and finished four centuries later.
History
The chevet was raised first and holds the Royal Chapel, known as the Chapel of the Holy Trinity, built to receive the tombs of the kings of the Mallorcan dynasty. The alabaster tombs of James II and James III seen there now are not medieval: they are neo-Gothic works by the sculptor Frederic Marès, that of James II installed in 1947.
The stonework decayed over centuries and the earthquake of 1851 made matters worse, putting the whole main front at risk. The new west facade was rebuilt to designs by the Madrid architect Juan Bautista Peyronnet.
In 1902 bishop Pere Joan Campins called in Antoni Gaudí, who worked here from 1904 to 1915. He moved the Gothic choir out of the nave into the presbytery, uncovered the thirteenth-century bishop’s throne, opened the Chapel of the Holy Trinity to view and designed stained glass, of which only three of nine planned windows were finished. He withdrew in 1914 after disputes with the contractor and left for good when Campins died in 1915.
A century later the cathedral commissioned another artist to remake a chapel: Miquel Barceló worked on the Chapel of the Blessed Sacrament from 2000, and it was inaugurated on 2 February 2007 — some three hundred square metres of ceramic skin, five pieces of liturgical furniture and five grisaille windows on the theme of the loaves and fishes.
What you see
The nave is carried on slender octagonal piers, and the effect is of height and emptiness rather than ornament. Over the presbytery hangs the baldachin, and it needs explaining: it is Gaudí’s own full-size working model, installed on 8 December 1912 in cardboard, paper, wire and wood as a guide for a definitive version in permanent materials that was never made. What hangs there is an unfinished study, and that is precisely what makes it remarkable.
The great rose window in the east wall measures 11.85 metres across and holds 1,115 panes. Twice a year, on 2 February and 11 November, sunlight through it is projected on the interior wall of the main portal just below the second rose window, so that the two briefly form a figure of eight. The effect lasts about five minutes; the cathedral opens at half past seven on those mornings.
Practical information
- Address: Plaza de la Almoina, Palma de Mallorca
- Opening (March–November): Monday to Friday 10:00–17:15, Saturday 10:00–14:15, closed Sunday to tourist visits
- Opening (December–February): Monday to Friday 10:00–15:15, Saturday 10:00–14:15
- Tickets: cathedral and Museum of Sacred Art €11 (over-65 €9); with audioguide €16; cathedral and terraces €25
- Festival of Light: 2 February and 11 November, early morning
- Official site: catedraldemallorca.org
Sources
- Catedral de Mallorca, official history of the building — catedraldemallorca.org
- Catedral de Mallorca, official page on the Festival of Light (rose window dimensions and the dates of the phenomenon)
- Catedral de Mallorca, visiting hours and admission
- Fundació Junta Constructora del Temple de la Sagrada Família and Gaudí scholarship on the Palma intervention of 1904–1915 and the provisional baldachin of 1912
- Universitat de les Illes Balears and Actas de Arquitectura Religiosa Contemporánea on the Barceló chapel, 2000–2007
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