Serra de Tramuntana

UNESCO listed the Serra de Tramuntana in 2011, and pointedly not for the rock. The citation is for a cultural landscape — 30,745 hectares of terracing, qanats, channels and mills, a mountain rebuilt by hand over a thousand years to hold its soil in place and move water downhill.

What it actually is

A limestone range along the whole north-west coast of Mallorca. Puig Major, at 1,445 m the highest point in the Balearics, is out of bounds — its summit is a military radar station — so the walking happens on the terraces and mule tracks below. The pin sits at Fornalutx, above the Sóller basin, which is the easiest place to watch the listed landscape still doing its job: citrus stacked on stone walls, water running in open channels.

Sóller, Fornalutx and the wooden train

The Palma–Sóller railway opened on 16 April 1912 to get oranges over the mountain, boring a 2,856 m tunnel through the Serra d’Alfàbia; it still runs on 914 mm track, and the tram down to Port de Sóller followed on 4 October 1913. Fornalutx, about 3 km uphill, was part of Sóller until 1813 and keeps some of the island’s best surviving teules pintades — hand-painted roof tiles, a tradition that flowered in the 16th century, with a collection in the old oil mill at Can Xoroi.

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