Mallorca: The Making of the Landscape

The island of Robert Graves, Joan Miro and Archduke Ludwig Salvador has become the most popular holiday destination in the Mediterranean with nearly 10 million visitors a year. Few, however, are aware of the 5000 year history of Mallorca and its resulting landscape featuring late Bronze Age navetes and talayots, Roman cities, and a major medieval trading port with one of Europe’s largest cathedrals. Mallorca’s landscape has been formed with a pattern of important country houses and enclosed fields, and the relics of major nineteenth century industries including textiles and shoe-making workshops. One hundred and twenty years of tourism, latterly on a massive scale, endangers much of what has gone before. Professor Buswell’s pioneering work, based on more than ten years of local research, describes and analyses all these elements that together form the contemporary landscape. Written in an accessible style and well-illustrated with maps and photographs, this book will appeal to student and concerned reader alike and should be read by all who are inquisitive about what they see around them when they visit the island.