Palma was Roman Palmaria, Muslim Madina Mayurqa, then capital of the independent Kingdom of Mallorca after Jaume I took the city in 1229. Three days traces that layering: Islamic bathhouses, Gothic cloisters, a round castle, and the Inquisition's forgotten victims.
The Moorish alcázar of the walis of Madina Mayurqa, converted by Jaume II around 1305 into the Gothic royal palace of the Kingdom of Mallorca. Open 10:00–18:00 (Apr–Sep to 20:00), closed Mondays. Note the Arab arches surviving inside Christian halls.
The only substantially intact building from Madina Mayurqa, a 10th–12th-century private hammam whose caldarium dome rests on twelve mismatched columns recycled from Roman and Byzantine buildings. Daily 09:30–19:00, in a walled garden off Carrer Can Serra.
Palma's Jewish quarter around Carrer Monti-Sion and Carrer Called Menor, sealed off after the 1391 pogrom. The interpretation centre maps the two calls, the 1435 forced conversions, and the chuetas — descendants of fifteen converso surnames ostracised into the 1970s.
Founded 1281 on the site of a Muslim soap works. The trapezoidal cloister with 115 slender columns is Palma's finest Gothic courtyard, and the tomb of Ramon Llull — the Mallorcan philosopher who died around 1315 — sits in a side chapel above the sacristy.
Built 1300–1311 for Jaume II, Europe's only fully circular Gothic castle and later a military prison holding Jovellanos from 1802 to 1808 and French POWs after Bailén. The upper terrace reads the whole bay; the History Museum of Palma occupies the ground rooms.
The 16th-century bastion built against Ottoman and Barbary raids, its ramparts and dry moat still complete. The walkway along the curtain wall shows how Palma's Renaissance defences replaced the medieval Almudaina line after Charles V's Mediterranean wars.
The island's archaeology and history collection in a Gothic-Renaissance palace: Talayotic bronzes from the pre-Roman stone-tower culture, Roman finds from Pollentia, and Almohad ceramics excavated in the city centre. Tue–Sat 10:00–18:00, Sun mornings.
Sa Llotja was built 1420–1452 by Guillem Sagrera as the merchants' exchange when Mallorca ran Mediterranean trade routes; the neighbouring Consolat de Mar, the maritime tribunal of 1600, is now the seat of the Balearic government.
A merchant's mansion off Carrer Zanglada showing the Mallorcan patio house at full stretch — courtyard, stone staircase, piano nobile — furnished as a wealthy family lived in it around 1900, when sugar and shoe fortunes rebuilt the old town.
Carrer Sol and Carrer Portella trace the Muslim street grid that the Christian conquest never straightened. Can Vivot's colonnaded courtyard of 1725 is the grandest Baroque patio in the city, entered through an unmarked door beside the Marquis' coat of arms.
The square was built in 1823 over the Casa de la Inquisición, which stood here from 1490. Palma's autos-da-fé burned 37 chuetas in 1691, including Rafael Valls; the Sant Antoniet cloister a few steps away survives from the convent complex that adjoined it.
The 1912 narrow-gauge line to Sóller was financed by orange growers to break the mountain isolation, and still runs 1929 wooden carriages. The station building and the Jaume I equestrian statue mark Palma's early-industrial edge outside the demolished walls.