Coves de l'Alzinaret
Archaeological site · Mallorca
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A five-minute detour into the pine-and-holm-oak hillside above Cala Sant Vicenç, this Bronze Age necropolis is Mallorca's most important prehistoric burial site: eight rock-cut chambers, once fifteen, carved between 1700 and 1500 BC. Free to visit, reached via a short path around the hill.
British archaeologist Wilfrid Hemp surveyed and catalogued the necropolis in 1927. Cave 7, generally considered the best preserved, has a stone-cut porch and antechamber, with recesses cut for a closing slab plus shelves and benches for grave offerings. During the Spanish Civil War, some of the chambers were used as shelter by prisoners, and the interiors still show wear from that occupation. Two cruder tombs cut into the rock between two of the caves belong to a much later burial phase: their foot ends have eroded away, and on stylistic grounds they are dated to the 5th to 8th centuries AD. The necropolis reaches beyond the marked path, too: a few more carved chambers survive across the street, and at least one more sits on private land, unmarked and rarely seen.
What you see
The entrance to Cave 7 is barely fifty centimetres wide, a low opening cut into the rock that visitors duck through to reach the carved chamber inside.
Practical
Reached via a short path off Carrer Joaquim Sorolla, on the right as you enter Cala Sant Vicenç from the MA-2200 coast road.
archaeologyprehistoric sitebronze age