Nestling in a fold of lush green hills, Valldemossa is a picturesque town sitting 15km north of Palma, slightly inland from the jagged north west coast of Mallorca.

Mallorca's popularity as a tourist destination comes from an unusual source. In the winter of 1838, the pianist Frederic Chopin and his lover, the writer George Sand, resided at a Carthusian monastery here in Valldemossa. Seeing that Chopin suffered from tuberculosis, the couple felt that the sunny, warm climate of the Mediterranean would help him recover.

Unfortunately, the winter of 1838 was cold and damp, and caused Chopin's health to decline. The couple took out their frustrations on each other and on residents of Valldemossa, events which guided George Sands pen in producing her scathing novel, A Winter in Mallorca, in which she labelled the locals as thieves and savages.The monastery where Chopin and Sands stayed is now a museum containing relics of of the famous composer, including some of his original manuscripts.


Although most people visit Valldemossa because of its link to Chopin, there is more to Validemossa than that. Valldemossa is also the birthplace of Catalina Thomas, Mallorca's patron saint. Born in 1531, Catalina Thomas was a peasant girl renowned for her humilty who became a nun in Palm. In 1935, she was canonized as a saint and almost every home in Valldemossa has a plaque in her honour.

Furnished with plenty eateries catering for the day trippers, Valldemossa is also famous for housing the vacation home of Michael Douglas and Catherine Zeta Jones. Quite recently, Michael Douglas founded the Costa Nord Cultural Centre with the purpose of highlighting the natural beauty and cultural heritage of the area.





Recommended Books

Winter in Majorca As a five-year-old child, William Graves is taken in 1944 from England to a mountain village in Majorca, where his father, the poet Robert Graves, had returned with his new family to the place where he had lived before the war with Laura Riding. Young William grows up in the writer's shadow, while experiencing the way of life of the Majorcans which have hardly changed for hundreds of years, and participating in the day-to-day activities of the village. William Graves conveys the texture of life in Majorca - the food, the pattern of the seasons, the camaraderie and rivalries within the village, and the growing sense, from the 1960s onwards, that his fragile paradise was under threat. The book is also a portrait of Robert Graves, his "Muses" and his entourage, and a study of how the son of a famous father finds his own identity.

Wild Olives: Life in Majorca with Robert Graves