Many people treat Palma as a stopover. They land, spend a night somewhere near the old town, do the cathedral, and leave for wherever they actually booked the trip around the island. Having now watched this happen many times, Privadia, which books private villas for guests in Mallorca, and has done so for years, would gently suggest that’s the wrong approach. The city itself is worth your time, and the best way to experience it is from a base outside it, coming in for the day rather than sleeping inside the noise.

The food scene is genuinely serious. The architecture is stranger and more layered than photographs suggest. The old town has corners most visitors never find because they’re walking too fast. A well-spent day covers most of what matters.

The Cathedral: Go there first, but not the way everyone does

Walk down to the seafront below the cathedral walls before you go inside. Don’t skip this part. The building sits on a promontory above the bay and was deliberately positioned to be seen from the sea. Until you’ve stood below it and looked up properly, the photos from the esplanade won’t have prepared you.

Inside, the thing to look for is Gaudí’s work. He was brought in around the turn of the 20th century to restore parts of the building and promptly moved the choir stalls from the centre of the nave to the sides, still argued about, then hung a wrought-iron crown of thorns above the altar. It’s enormous. From a distance it looks like something made of paper. Worth a proper hour of your time.

The Old Town: Wander without a map

This part of the city was the Jewish quarter until the 15th century. The…

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