Menorca
The quieter Balearic.
Menorca is the island Mallorca didn't want to be. A biosphere reserve since 1993, no high-rises, no coastal road, but a walking path — the Camí de Cavalls — once around the island, 185 kilometres past coves you can only reach on foot.
The interior is agricultural: dry-stone walls, cows, cheese from Maó, white farmsteads — the llocs — with their typical chimneys. Ciutadella in the west is a small baroque town with a harbour; Maó in the east was British and still tastes of gin.
The beaches in the south are why people come: Cala Macarella, Cala Mitjana, turquoise and white. In the north the coast is red and rough, and the wind — the tramuntana — decides where you swim.
Menorca is the Balearics without the Balearic noise.
We recommend Menorca to families and couples who stay a week and want a different cove every day. Son Blanc near Alaior is a farm estate as the island produces them: 14 rooms in an old lloc, its own garden, its own kitchen, and the beaches of the south twenty minutes away. Not a resort, a farm with beds. Come in June or at the end of September. Rent bikes, not just a car — the island is flat, and the coves without car parks are the best.
Houses in Menorca
Stories from Menorca
Mallorca, Three Ways — and Menorca Once
A townhouse in Santanyí, an estate in the hills near Artà, a house for people who want to move — and on the neighbouring island a farm that shows what Mallorca once was.
We Keep Ending Up in Farmhouses
Farmhouses leave no loud memory. They settle in slowly — and often stay longer than the most spectacular hotels in the world.
The Return of Slow Travel
Why the best journeys are getting smaller again — and what five addresses in Portugal, Spain, Tyrol and South Tyrol have to say about travelling without urgency.
