Although most tourists to Mallorca, Spain flock to the beach or the mountains to bike on their holidays in Mallorca, there are several “off the radar” spots to visit if you’d like to spend a quieter day during your stay. These three towns and nearby sites are relatively close to each other in the north-eastern part of the island and make good short stops if your traveling from the east coast to the north coast, which is exactly what we were doing. See other posts on Mallorca here.
If you enjoy professional tennis, you may have heard of Rafael Nadal, a former #1 ranked tennis player and winner of 22 Grand Slam Men’s Singles titles, including 14 French Open titles. Just amazing. Manacor is his home town and he has built a tennis academy there, just on the outskirts of town. We stopped by to take a look and visit the Academy store to pick up some souvenirs. The academy appeared fairly quiet while were there (September) and the facility was in the midst of expansion. If you or your children or friends are looking for some serious game improvement, this might be your place!
While there is more to Manacor than tennis, this was our main stop.
This little town is the birthplace of Franciscan Friar Junípero Serra, born in 1713, who made it all the way to what later became the state of California and established missions that led to the founding of the cities of San Diego and San Francisco. He represented the Catholic Church on what was known as the Portolá expedition (1769–1770).
Just outside of Petra, you can visit Bonany Monastery/Sanctuary, which sits on a hill (elevation 1,000 ft) above Petra and affords a lovely view of the island’s interior landscape. Signs from the town will lead you on the narrow road up to the monastery.
The monastery and church date to the 17th century when locals would ascend the hill to pray for rain for growing their crops, and a statue of the Virgin Mary was found on the hillside. The main church’s hours are short (10 am – 2 pm), so arrange your visit accordingly if you’d like to go inside. I believe the Sanctuary also offers some accomodations if you’d like to have some solitude during your stay on Mallorca.
Artà is a larger town than Petra but still easy to cover on foot and only 15-30 minutes from some lovely beaches on the northeastern shore of Mallorca.
Artà has a nice pedestrian street with fun and classy shops that leads towards the hill topped by the Sanctuary of San Salvador (Sant Salvador) with medieval walls surrounding it; this is one of the town’s main sights.
Ses Païsses
While exploring one of the shops in Artà, I saw a post card with a photo of some prehistoric ruins and I inquired about those ruins, and learned about Ses Païsses, a Bronze Age (approximately 900 BC) settlement, which is less than 2 km (or less than a mile) outside of Artà. This is one of the most important prehistoric sites in Mallorca and the Balearic Islands for that matter. This was an unexpected find and we enjoyed seeing this site. Ses Païsses was a prelude to what we were going to see in Menorca, which is home to a number of interesting prehistoric sites.
Artà would make a great place to call home for a night or two if you plan to visit this part of the island. We stopped here for a couple hours on our way to Alcúdia, our last stay on Mallorca.