Hotels in Randa

Randa

Randa is a hamlet of about a hundred and twenty residents in the municipality of Algaida, in the south of the municipal district, halfway between the town of Algaida and the city of Llucmajor. It stands on the Pla de Mallorca at the foot of the Puig de Randa, the 543-metre hill that rises alone out of the plain and can be picked out from most of the south of the island. The hill is why the place matters: a road spirals to the summit, where the sanctuary of Cura stands on the spot at which, by tradition, the Blessed Ramon Llull withdrew into solitude and received his illumination in 1274, and where the image of the Virgin of Cura has been venerated since the Marian altar was raised there the year after. Pilgrims have been climbing to it ever since and still do, though today the people grinding up the hill are as likely to be cyclists as the devout. The climb is one of the classic ascents of the island, short but relentless, and the view from the top takes in the bay of Palma, the plain and the Serra de Tramuntana in a single sweep. Two more hermitages sit on the same hillside below the summit, so the whole slope amounts to a single religious landscape. The hamlet itself is a handful of stone houses on steep lanes, with a spring, a church and no commerce to speak of. Underneath it runs the underground irrigation channel of Son Reus de Randa, nearly three hundred metres long and the longest on Mallorca, dug in the Islamic period. Accommodation is limited to a small number of rural and hillside properties, which is about right for the size of the place. Randa is for travellers who want quiet, a landmark climb from the door, and Palma and the southern beaches both within half an hour.