Palma Cathedral (La Seu)

Twice a year — on 2 February and 11 November — the first sun through La Seu’s great east rose window drops a disc of colour onto the west wall, directly beneath the second rose, and for a few minutes the nave holds a figure of eight. Mallorcans call it the Festa de la Llum, and nobody seriously argues the medieval masons planned it.

What it actually is

The cathedral of Mallorca, raised on the site of the main mosque of Madina Mayurqa after Jaume I took the city in 1229, and not consecrated until 1601. It was built on the old sea wall rather than behind it, so the long south flank — and the Portal del Mirador, the best carving on the building — faces the water. The bell tower was finished in 1498; the west front is a 19th-century reconstruction after the earthquake of 1851.

Two artists let loose inside

From 1904 Antoni Gaudí spent about a decade reordering the interior: he shifted the choir out of the central nave, reopened the Gothic windows and hung a wrought-iron canopy above the altar, then walked off the job in 1914 after falling out with the chapter. A century later Miquel Barceló worked between 2001 and 2006 on the Chapel of Sant Pere, lining it in fired clay that swells into fish, loaves and split fruit. The two spaces are five minutes apart and read as an argument.

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