Catedral, Palma de Mallorca , Spain
- Locatio: Palma de Mallorca
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Spai, Addres: Carrer del Palau Reial 9
- More informatio: www.catedraldemallorca.org
- Prices: adult/child €6/free
- Opening hours: 10am-6.15pm Mon-Fri, to 2.15pm Sat
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Palma’s vast cathedral is the city's major architectural landmark.
Aside from its sheer scale and undoubted beauty, its stunning interior
features, designed by Antoni Gaudí and renowned contemporary artist
Miquel Barceló, make this unlike any cathedral elsewhere in the world.
The awesome structure is predominantly Gothic, apart from the main
facade, which is startling, quite beautiful and completely mongrel.
The
Catedral occupies the site of what was the central mosque of Medina
Mayurka, capital of Muslim Mallorca for three centuries. Although Jaume I
and his marauding men forced their way into the city in 1229, work on
the Catedral (La Seu in Catalan), one of Europe’s largest, did not begin
until 1300. Rather, the mosque was used in the interim as a church and
dedicated to the Virgin Mary. Work wasn’t completed until 1601.
The
original was a Renaissance cherry on the Gothic cake, but an earthquake
in 1851 (which caused considerable panic but no loss of life) severely
damaged it. Rather than mend the original, it was decided to add some
neo-Gothic flavour. With its interlaced flying buttresses on each flank
and soaring pinnacles it forms a masterful example of the style. The
result is a hybrid of the Renaissance original (in particular the main
doorway) and an inevitably artificial-feeling, 19th-century
pseudo-Gothic monumentalism.
Mass times vary, but one always takes place at 9a
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