Hotels in Algaida

Algaida

Algaida is a town of some six thousand three hundred people in the centre-south of Mallorca, on the Ma-15 road from Palma, bordering Llucmajor, Montuiri, Lloret de Vista Alegre, Sencelles, Santa Eugenia and the eastern edge of Palma's own municipality. Its territory takes in three settlements: Algaida itself, Pina, and the hamlet of Randa at the foot of the massif that dominates the southern skyline. That massif carries the summits of Randa at 543 metres, Son Reus at 501 and Son Roig at 420, and it is the only real relief for miles in an otherwise gently rolling countryside. People have lived here a very long time: human remains from the pre-talayotic period were found in the caves of Son Reus, and the walled talayotic settlement of Sa Serra-Punxuat still stands. Under Muslim rule the area belonged to the district of Muntuy, and the farmsteads that became today's villages were already in place, sited along the watercourses; the underground irrigation channel of Son Reus de Randa, at just under three hundred metres, is the longest of its kind on Mallorca. The town was first known as Castellitx, after the parish church built on the estate of that name immediately after the Christian conquest, and the parish seat only passed to the church of Algaida around 1410. The chapel of Castellitx survives out in the fields and is one of the oldest places of worship on the island. The twentieth century was hard here: many people from Algaida went to work as mares sandstone quarrymen at El Arenal, and others emigrated to France, Cuba, Buenos Aires, Venezuela and Panama, though most eventually came home. Today the town lives partly from Palma, twenty-five minutes along the main road, while keeping its own square, market and festival calendar intact. Algaida is the choice for a base that is a town in its own right, with the airport, the capital and the south coast all inside half an hour.