Museum of Mallorca (Museu de Mallorca)

May 2021. The Belgian government lifted the ban on leisure travel in April, but strict travel rules limited options. As the Balearic Islands – lles Balears or Islas Baleares – were a yellow zone, we booked flights and a hotel in Palma de Mallorca.

Between visiting Cathedral-Basilica of Santa Maria of Palma, also known as La Seu, and lunch at De Tokio a Lima in Boutique Hotel Can Alomar, we visited the Museu de Mallorca or Museum of Mallorca.

The website isn’t very welcoming. Firstly, there’s only a Catalan version. And the interface and typography are very dated. Early 2000s. So yeah. But as we had a couple of hours to kill, we gave it a shot.

The museum was created in1961 from the collections of the old Provincial Museum of Fine Arts, the Marroig collection, the archaeological collections owned by the state, the funds deposited by the Lul·liana Archaeological Society and the Prado Museum in Madrid. Since then the funds have increased extraordinarily, divided into several sections: archeology, ethnography, fine arts and decorative and industrial arts.

The main headquarters are located in Palma in the house of the counts of Aiamans, better known as Can Desbrull or popularly as Ca la Gran Cristiana.

The visit

Admission is mere 2.40 euros. It was a Thursday afternoon and we were the only visitors. I expected archeology, but we saw art through the centuries and then predominant styles.

Explanations are multilingual. There’s not that much to see, but you can hardly beat 2,40 euro. So yes, it was okay for an hour or so.

There is by the way much space left for a larger exhibition.