Cultural Landscape of the Serra de Tramuntana

The Serra de Tramuntana is a sheer range running along the north-west coast of Mallorca; its highest summit, Puig Major, rises to 1,436 m, the highest point in the Balearic Islands. The earliest documented traces of people in the range, around 2500 BCE, are pottery, the use of metals and signs of farming. The Talayotic culture appeared between about 1300 and 900 BCE, and Rome held the island from the 2nd century BCE. After the Vandals sacked Mallorca in 454, the mountains were only thinly settled.

When the island came under Muslim rule in 903, farmland was organised around two kinds of holding, the larger al-qarya and the smaller rahal. In this period terraces were laid across the slopes, water sources were tapped and olive growing spread, and agreements were drawn up so that several groups could share the same springs and fields. The Christian conquest of 1229 brought feudalism, and land was gathered into large estates. The population grew in the 14th century; by the 16th century olive oil was the estate owners' main source of wealth, and it remained central to the island's economy from the 17th to the 19th century.

In the 19th century the landscape became known among Europe's aristocrats and intellectuals, and some came to stay for long periods. Archduke Ludwig Salvator of Austria bought some 16 large estates and brought them back into production. Mass tourism from the 1960s sped up the abandonment of farming, but much of the range kept its old character, and on 27 June 2011 it was inscribed as a cultural landscape.