La Seu Cathedral
Rising from Palma's seafront like a sandstone cliff, La Seu is one of the largest Gothic cathedrals in the world and the single most recognisable image of the city. Step inside and Gaudí's extraordinary wrought-iron canopy above the altar will stop you cold.
A thousand years of ambition
Construction began in 1229 on the orders of King James I of Aragon, who vowed to build a great church if he survived a storm at sea — and the project rumbled on for nearly four centuries. The result is a forest of impossibly slender pillars holding up a nave 44 metres high, the tallest Gothic nave in the world.
The rose window on the west façade is a masterpiece of medieval geometry, with 1,236 pieces of stained glass spanning 12.5 metres. On winter mornings around the winter solstice, light pours through it and projects a perfect circle of colour onto the opposite wall — a phenomenon that draws photographers from across Europe.
Gaudí's unexpected fingerprints
Between 1904 and 1914, Antoni Gaudí was commissioned to modernise the interior. He relocated the choir stalls, hung an asymmetric baldachin of iron and lamps above the high altar, and added ceramic touches that feel startlingly contemporary against the medieval stonework.
The terrace walk along the cathedral's southern buttresses gives you a close-up of the flying arches and a sweeping view over the Parc de la Mar and the blue bay beyond — entirely free to access and often overlooked by visitors who rush straight inside.
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