A 15th-century palauet in Palma's old town
A Gothic palace beside the cathedral.
Can Cirera is a 15th-century stone palauet as old as the cathedral next door. Behind an unassuming façade, the house turns inward to a paved courtyard of pointed arches, nineteen rooms held in the cool of thick marès walls.
The house
One quiet façade, and a courtyard kept behind it.
From the street you would walk past it. Like the old merchant palaces of Palma, Can Cirera shows the city almost nothing and keeps everything for the people who come in.
Step through the entrance and the house opens onto its patio: a paved courtyard of marès stone, ringed by pointed arches, an outside stair climbing one wall, a stone well-head still in its corner. This is where the building has organised itself for five centuries: cool in the heat, quiet under the city.
The rest reads outward from there. Nineteen rooms, a handful looking onto the patio, the rest into the lanes of the old town. Nothing loud was added in the restoration: bare stone where it was good, lime plaster over the rest, and the proportions kept as they were found.
- Built
- Around 1480, in the same century as the cathedral
- Built of
- Marès: the golden sandstone of Mallorca
- The rooms
- Nineteen, each one designed on its own
- Held by
- 4.6 across 168 guest reviews
Stone & light
Thick walls hold the cool. The patio lets the light in.
A house this old in the middle of a city solves the same two problems with one idea: the courtyard. The marès is thick enough to keep August out, so the rooms stay cool and shaded; the patio opens a clean shaft of sky in the centre, so the light that does come in is borrowed, not blunt.
It changes through the day. Morning lands flat on the upper walls; by late afternoon the warmth has dropped into the archway and the stone goes amber. The same hour the courtyard is laid for a drink, and the city noise stays on the far side of the wall.
The light the patio keeps, hour by hour
The rooms
Nineteen rooms, no two the same.
Because the house is old and was fitted out room by room, every one is its own shape. What they share: thick walls that keep the lane quiet, beamed or plastered ceilings, and the deep calm of stone. From a snug double to a suite where a Gothic arch frames the headboard.
Double
A snug, quiet room behind thick stone. The calm of the old town without the noise of it.
Double with view
The same room, turned to the lanes or the patio: a window onto the stone of Palma.
Premium double
More room to spread out, the same restraint: stone, oak and white linen, a little more of each.
Deluxe double
One of the larger rooms, some with a balcony or terrace onto the old town.
Suite: terrace or spa bath
The top of the house: a suite with its own terrace, or one with a spa bath cut into the stone.
Book direct
Book the hotel's own reservation site and there is no agent between you and the house. Tell them your dates and they will confirm which room is free.
Check datesThe courtyard, in full
The patio, the stone, the hour it turns amber.
From the arched entrance at night to the breakfast table in the morning sun: the house across a day.
Beside the cathedral
Eighty metres from La Seu, and the whole old town at the door.
Can Cirera sits in the tangle of lanes directly behind the cathedral: the same stone, the same century, a minute's walk to the great west front and the sea wall in front of it. You are in the oldest, quietest part of Palma, above the harbour and below the bell-tower.
Everything worth walking to is on foot from the door: the Arab baths and the patios of the old town, the markets and the cafés, the galleries of Sant Pere, the port a few streets down.
- Palma Cathedral
- A minute on foot
- Old-town lanes & markets
- At the door
- The sea wall & port
- A few minutes down
- Airport
- About 15 min by car
Stay
Come and stay inside the stone.
Book direct on the house's own reservation site and there is no agent between you and the people at the door. Send your dates and how many you are, and they will tell you which of the nineteen rooms is free.