La Seu Cathedral
Landmark · Mallorca
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La Seu is Palma's Gothic cathedral, begun after Jaume I's 1229 conquest on the site of the city's main mosque, with construction running from 1300 into the 17th century. Its main rose window, the largest in any Gothic cathedral in Europe, produces a rare effect: on 2 February and 11 November each year, sunrise light through the window casts a colored figure eight onto the opposite wall. Antoni Gaudí later worked on the interior before a dispute ended his involvement.
Much of the building is cut from marés sandstone quarried locally in the 14th and 15th centuries; some of the largest blocks came from the sea caves at Portals Vells down the coast and were carried to the site by boat. That stone went into real scale: the nave rises 44 meters, among the tallest Gothic vaults anywhere, carried on pillars so slender they run about a twelfth the width of the vault itself, roughly half as thick, proportionally, as the columns at Reims. Construction began in 1229, soon after Jaume I's conquest of the island; the oldest surviving part, the Chapel of the Holy Trinity, was finished in 1327, the bell tower in 1498, and work on the building continued into the 17th century. Antoni Gaudí led a restoration of the interior from 1903, moving the choir stalls to the sides of the presbytery and opening up windows that had been bricked over, before a falling-out with the cathedral chapter ended his involvement in 1914. The crown he designed to hang over the high altar is still only the life-size model he built; the final metal version was never cast, though the wrought-iron chandeliers he called the troubadours remain in place.
What you see
The cathedral rises straight off the old sea wall above Parc de la Mar, its honey-colored stone doubled by reflection in the artificial lake below.
Practical
The cathedral sits directly on Palma's dedicated seafront cycle path, part of the 12 km route along the Passeig Marítim between Porto Pi and El Arenal, so a rider passes right beneath the building without leaving the bike lane. Cycling is not permitted on the old-town streets immediately around the cathedral itself, so the final stretch to the doors is on foot.
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