Artà WebA town on limestone

Artà and the Llevant coast of Mallorca — its stone, its caves, its coastline, its water.

A dry-stone terraced hillside in raking evening light

Bedrock

A town on limestone, and everything the rock decided

Where the walls came from, where the water goes, and why the coast east of Artà was never built on. Start with Ses Païsses →

Photo: Deià, Balearic Islands, Spain - panoramio · Wikimedia Commons

Ses Païsses
A cyclopean enclosure and a central tower, fifteen minutes on foot from the town centre. The settlement →
1229
The Catalan conquest under Jaume I; the fortified enclosure above the town is absorbed into Christian use. The sanctuary hill →
The aquifer
The island drinks from underneath, and the sea moves in behind what is pumped out. The constraint →
Massive stone lintel rests atop upright megaliths forming a doorway in a cyclopean wall
The main gateway at Ses Païsses: a lintel stone spanning two uprights, on a wall enclosing roughly 1.3 hectares.Photo: Poblat Talaiòtic de Ses Païsses 02 · Wikimedia Commons

Building with what is underfoot

A Bronze Age settlement inside the town's walking distance

Ses Païsses is a talayotic settlement with a cyclopean wall and a central tower, and it sits a short walk from a working town rather than in isolation.

Read it →

Water

An island that drinks from underneath

Mallorca depends on groundwater, and over-extraction near the coast draws seawater into the aquifer — a process that is measured and slow to reverse.

An empty cove between rock arms, flat light
Cala Mesquida, east of Artà. The coast here stayed thin because the tracks down to it were bad, and protection arrived after the awkwardness, not before it. A shoreline that stayed awkward →Photo: Cala Mesquida, Artà, Mallorca, España · Wikimedia Commons

The island's real constraint

Water is the argument, and it is settled underground

Aquifers, torrents and the seasonal load. Fresh water floats on salt here: lower the fresh head near the coast and the sea moves in behind it.

RAINFALL RECHARGE — ALL OF IT IN WINTEREXTRACTION PEAKS IN SUMMERSHALLOW WELLDEEP BOREHOLETERRACES SLOW THE RUN-OFFTHE TOWNTORRENT BED — DRY UNTIL IT IS NOTSEA LEVELWATER TABLEFRESH WATER, FLOATING ON SALTSALT WEDGE, MOVING INLANDTHE ISLAND’S WATER IN SECTION · FIGURE AT 1.8 m · PUMP FASTER THAN THE WINTER REFILLS AND THE WEDGE ADVANCES
Recharge arrives in winter; extraction peaks in summer. Where the fresh head drops near the coast, the salt wedge moves in behind it.

Drag the section sideways →

01An island that drinks from underneathMallorca depends on groundwater, and over-extraction near the coast draws seawater into the aquifer — a process that is measured and slow to reverse.02Riverbeds that are dry until they are notThe torrents run only after heavy rain, which is why they are built over and why flooding here arrives all at once.03Four months carrying twelveWater and waste load concentrate into the summer, so infrastructure is sized for a third of the year and idle for the rest.

Where this is

Six pins, and the awkward corner they sit in

Artà is in the north-east. Palma, the port and the administration, is two hours away by the roads that all bend towards it.

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Key

  • Mallorca
  • Mediterranean
  • Named on this site
  1. 1Ses Païsses — the talayotic settlement, a fifteen-minute walk from the town
  2. 2Artà · Coves d'Artà — the town itself, and the caves in the cliff east of it
  3. 3Colònia de Sant Pere — the coast of the Llevant park
  4. 4Sóller — the northern end of the wooden tram line
  5. 5Palma — the port, the cathedral and the administration

The six things this site is about

Start anywhere; they all end up at the rock

Building with what is underfoot

3 pieces

The holes in the limestone

3 pieces

A shoreline that stayed awkward

3 pieces

What the land supports

4 pieces

The island's real constraint

3 pieces

Artà in Mallorca

3 pieces

Colophon

Printed, in effect, with the help of the following

Standing support

And with