Exterior view

The kingdom of Majorca, which was independent between 1276 and 1349, provided important new buildings in the 14th and 15th centuries. The foundations were laid for the main churches in the capital, Palma de Mallorca. Founded in the 13th century, but partially completed only in the 14th and 15th centuries, the parish church of Santa Eulalia (begun 1250), the Franciscan church of San Francisco (largely complete by 1286), and the cathedral of Santa Mar�a are the most important monuments of medieval Majorcan church architecture.

The cathedral, built over a Moorish mosque, whose foundation walls were preserved until 1412, is a building that has an extraordinary effect as a feature of the townscape. For its entire length the body of the church is articulated by a system of massive, close-set supporting walls and buttresses that lend the 110-metre sides a graphic verticality reminiscent of iron bars.

The external buttresses correspond to eight narrow bays in the interior, which comprises a nave, aisles, and chapels. The nave and aisles were built around 1369 using slender octagonal supports for a 42-metre high vault, the rose window at the west end was also constructed at this time.

The layout, elegance, and technical brilliance of the support system suggest that the Catalan master mason Berenguer de Montagut was summoned to Majorca for this major project. The markedly varying height of nave and aisles, and the typical external buttressing, however, also support the notion of north European influences.

The photo shows the exterior seen from the sea.