rel="nofollow" href="#fb3_img_img_8d9056ce-cc17-573a-99cb-24cc76565f45.jpg" alt="Patio in the Calle Zavella"/>
“The patio in the palace of the Marquis de Vivot is one of the most beautiful in Palma. …”
(page 14)
I am not competent to enter into the details of wrought work and sculpture with which the patios of Palma abound, but even to the visitor unversed in architecture a voyage of discovery in the older quarters is full of interest. The meanest back street may produce a richly-carved window frame or a staircase with a stone balustrade of quaint and original design. The Calle de Sol boasts a house front in purest Rénaissance style, five big windows on the first floor being wreathed in gargoyles and strange stone monsters.
In the Calle de la Almudaina we come upon an ancient machicolated archway spanning the street. This once formed part of the wall that encircled the very kernel of the old Moorish city, and is the only survival of the five gateways that afforded entrance to the Citadel.
Not far from here is the equally ancient Moorish Bath, a small building some twenty feet square standing in an orange garden. It is in the Byzantine style, and is built of small bricks scarcely thicker than the intervening layers of mortar. The circular basin which no doubt occupied the floor of the building has disappeared, and the interior contains nothing but twelve much-worn pillars standing in a square, the eight centre ones supporting the cupola of the roof, while the four corner columns are by an ingenious—and I believe very unusual—arrangement omitted from the circle and left standing back in the angles of the building.
An air of incredible age pervades this blackened and cobwebbed relic of Islamism that lingers, unaltered and half forgotten, in the very heart of the Christian city. It forms—with the Almudaina arch and the signal tower of Porto Pi—the only authentic memorial of the race which occupied Majorca for a period of five hundred years.
The churches of Palma are many. One of the oldest is that of Monte Sion, which is said to have adopted both the site and the name of a still older Jewish synagogue: as one skirts its walls, huge, blank, and dungeon-like, one is quite unprepared for its exquisite doorway—one of the richest pieces of sculpture in Palma. It is a fine specimen of rococo, dating from 1683, and constituting in its delicacy of detail and beauty of proportion one of the finest of the many beautiful church doors for which Palma is famed.
Scarcely less magnificent is the west front of the great church of San Francisco, with its immense doorway in late Rénaissance style, surmounted by an exquisite rose window. This church contains the tomb of a scion of a noble Catalonian house—the famous Rámon Lull, warrior, scholar, and saint—who in the reign of Jaime II. founded a college for the instruction of twelve monks in oriental tongues, and was himself martyred in Algeria by the infidels whom he went forth to convert. His body was secured by some Genoese fishermen, who set sail for Italy with their precious burden; but when off the coast of Majorca their boat refused to advance till the martyr’s body was brought on shore, where it was laid to rest in its native soil by the monks of San Francisco.
“An air of incredible age pervades this blackened and cobwebbed relic of Islamism. …”
(page 16)
“The exquisite doorway of Montesion is one of the richest pieces of sculpture in Palma.”
(page 16)
The tomb is a beautiful Gothic monument of red marble, but the effigy of Rámon Lull, surrounded by fretted canopies and fantastic heraldic beasts, is only dimly visible in the deep gloom of the church.
A trap door leads down to an immense crypt, where a huddled-up human skeleton is pointed out and the story told of a bloody tragedy enacted in the church in the year 1490. Two of Palma’s greatest families were at deadly feud, and while attending the ceremonies of the Jour des Morts, upon some slight pretext came to blows. The church became a slaughter-house, and before swords were sheathed more than three hundred dead and wounded were left on the field of battle.
Whether the skeleton in the crypt is one of those that fell that memorable day may be doubted; but it is not improbable, for the church and its monastery were founded shortly after the conquest—by monks of the order of St. Francis of Assisi—and were from earliest times one of the chief places of burial for the nobility. The walls of the adjoining cloisters are thick with scutcheons and memorial tablets to those who were once the greatest in the land.
A beautiful colonnade of slender Gothic pillars encloses the monks’ garden, where two geese—sole occupants of the Paradiso—chatter angrily at the intruder. No other sound but the soft rustlings of palm branches and the whispers of the wind in the orange-trees breaks the silence of the long galleries and deserted cells.
From the upper corridor with its broken pavement chequered with dazzling patches of sunshine one looks out from under the deep overshadowing eaves to where the cathedral spires rise dim and distant across half the city. The atmosphere of infinite peace that pervades these cloisters—the sense of seclusion, although so near the busy life outside the walls—must have appealed deeply to the brown-frocked friars who once paced these beautiful walks “revolving many memories.”
Bitter must have been the day of expulsion when this monastery, like all the others in the island, was suppressed in 1835.
The church of San Nicolas contains a statue of Santa Catalina, a Majorcan saint of great fame, and—incorporated in the outer wall, is the rock on which she was sitting in the bed of the Riéra at the moment when she was informed of her admission into the convent of St. Magdalen. The interiors of these southern churches are so dark that it is with difficulty possible to make out the statues that occupy the side chapels; here may be seen a black Madonna and child of miraculous power; there a group of saints laden with ex-votos in the shape of flat silver images of men and women and models of human limbs, hung upon their arms by grateful devotees; in another niche is a life-sized Christ upon the cross—wearing a fringed crimson petticoat to the knees and a broad silver girdle with a bunch of artificial roses stuck in it, while matted locks of real hair straggle out from beneath the crown of thorns.
“In the ancient monastery of S. Francisco a beautiful colonnade of slender gothic pillars encloses the monks’ garden. …”
(page 18)
“From the upper corridor one looks out to where the cathedral spires rise dim and distant across half the city.”
(page 18)
In the Cathedral the darkness is so intense by contrast with the blinding light outside that it is some considerable time before one’s eyes become sufficiently accustomed to the gloom to perceive the details of the rich interior. The roof of the nave rises 150 feet above the level of the pavement, and is divided from the side aisles by fourteen great columns 70 feet in height, slender and stately as the shafts of forest trees. High overhead—where the delicate ribs of the vaulting cross—are carved the armorial shields of knights, who for this privilege paid heavy sums in bygone days towards the building of the church. Eight chapels, gorgeous with statues and gilding, occupy either side aisle, and above them are Gothic windows—so little suited to this land of fierce