Staying in Palma: what is in the city and what on Mallorca is reached from it

The short answer

Palma is the city; Mallorca is the island, and XTOUR covers Palma as one destination. The sights in the city itself are the cathedral, La Seu; the Royal Palace of La Almudaina beside it; and Bellver Castle, which houses the city's history museum.[4][2][1] Two subjects people often fold into "Palma" are elsewhere on the island: the Serra de Tramuntana, a World Heritage mountain landscape, and the Drach Caves at Porto Cristo on the east coast.[8][7]

XTOUR treats Palma as a base from which those places are reached, not as a container for them. XTOUR has no travel times between Palma and anywhere else on Mallorca, and it does not publish prices or opening hours.

In Palma: the cathedral

Palma's tourism foundation, Visit Palma, describes the cathedral as a Gothic building whose silhouette is reflected in the Parc de la Mar, and whose interior was reworked by Antoni Gaudí, who opened up large windows and moved choirs and altarpieces. It also points to the baldachin by Gaudí and Josep Maria Jujol and to a ceramic mural by Miquel Barceló.[1] XTOUR has not verified the cathedral's own website, catedraldemallorca.org, so it says nothing about how the cathedral sells its tickets or what its visit includes.

In Palma: the Royal Palace of La Almudaina

The Almudaina is run by Patrimonio Nacional, whose site lists it alongside the Royal Palace of Madrid and its other royal sites. Its page says the castle was raised between 1305 and 1314 for Jaime II, on a spot occupied since Roman times where traces of the earlier Arab alcazaba still shape the building, and that it is now the King's official residence during his visits to Mallorca.[2] Visit Palma adds that parts of the palace are closed to the public, while the parade ground, the Gothic chapel of Santa Anna, the Islamic-period baths and the terraces can be visited.[3] Patrimonio Nacional places the visitor entrance opposite the cathedral.[2]

The official information is inconsistent in three ways. Patrimonio Nacional's own page carries two fee tables that do not match each other, and its ticket buttons point to two different Patrimonio Nacional ticket sites, tickets.patrimonionacional.es and entradas.patrimonionacional.es. Visit Palma's listing gives opening times that differ from Patrimonio Nacional's.[3] Patrimonio Nacional's page also lists a weekly closing day and, from April to September, free access on two afternoons a week; XTOUR's reading is that the operator's own page, not the tourism listing, is the one to check.[2]

In Palma: Bellver Castle and the city's history museum

Visit Palma describes Bellver as a circular Gothic castle built for defence and control, with three original towers and the Torre del Homenaje, its keep.[4] Its ground floor, around the central courtyard, houses Palma's Museu d'Història de la Ciutat, which traces the city through its Roman, Moorish and Christian periods.[5] XTOUR has not verified the castle's official site, castelldebellver.palma.cat, so it relies on the tourism foundation's pages and does not describe ticketing.

Reached from Palma: the Serra de Tramuntana

The Serra de Tramuntana is not a single sight but a cultural landscape. UNESCO's World Heritage Committee inscribed it in 2011 on three grounds: irrigation systems introduced by the Arabs and joined by terraces built after the Christian conquest, an exchange between Muslim and Christian ways of working the land; dry-stone walls and water technology on a large scale; and towns and villages that grew from the Roman settlement model through the Islamic period. The same decision notes that the area has been formally protected since 1973.[7]

Visit Palma, the city's tourism foundation, presents Palma as a launch pad for trips to the rest of the island, the mountains among them, and says the Serra crosses 19 municipalities, naming villages such as Valldemossa, Deià and Sóller.[6] XTOUR has not verified which municipalities those are or whether Palma is among them, and it does not treat the Serra as part of the Palma destination. XTOUR's reading is that the Serra is reached from Palma, and that the villages Visit Palma names are separate places that XTOUR does not yet cover.[6]

Reached from Palma: the Drach Caves

The Drach Caves are at Porto Cristo, which the caves' own site describes as a former fishermen's refuge in the municipality of Manacor.[9] The caves' website is owned by a company, Cuevas del Drach, S.A., registered in Porto Cristo.[13] According to the caves' tour page, every visit follows a 1,200-metre route, includes a live classical concert on Lake Martel, performed there since 1935, and ends with a crossing of the lake by boat or on foot over a bridge.[9]

The caves' rules are strict and their own pages contradict one another. The ticket page says tickets cannot be booked by phone, that tours run in groups but are not guided, and that anyone who misses the time on their ticket loses the visit without a refund.[10] The rules page says the tour has steps, and that prams and wheelchairs cannot be used in the caves.[12] Against that:

• The boat. A notice on the home page says the boat trip has been suspended while the rest of the tour and the concert are unchanged; the tour page and the FAQ still describe the boat crossing as part of every visit.[11][9][8]
• How far ahead to book. The home-page notice says tickets can be bought up to 7 days in advance; the ticket page and the FAQ say about 30 days.[11][10][8]
• Tour times. The times listed on the home page are not the times offered in the booking form.[10][8]

XTOUR cannot tell which is current. The booking form is where a slot is actually bought.

What XTOUR covers and does not

XTOUR covers Palma as a destination. It has no entity for the island of Mallorca, so the Serra de Tramuntana and the Drach Caves appear here as places reached from Palma, never as parts of it. XTOUR does not publish travel times, routes, transport options or prices, and it does not say which of these places can share a day. It has not assessed accessibility beyond quoting the Drach Caves' own rules.

For the city as a base, see the Palma destination page, and for how Palma fits a wider trip, the Spain travel guide.