Alaró of stone and memory

This Mallorcan rural estates known as possessions are particularly beautiful for their facades, which fit tightly to the purest guidelines of Mallorcan traditionalism: faces of great altitude or longitude with exposed stone ashlars, balconies and windows of different types and round arch or segmental arch doorways. 

Almadrà is a valley sited in a karst depression on the main route to Tossals Verds, a refuge belonging to the municipality of Escorca. Clot d'Almadrà groups three farmhouses that form a small hamlet: Son Ordines, Can Xalet and Casa d'Amunt.

Casa d'Amunt is a toponym that appears registered in the Llibre del Repartiment -Book of Division- of 1232, which proves it is one of the oldest farmhouses of Alaró. The main facade is orientated to the East, as most of the houses of the period, and the house is organized around a ground floor, a main floor and an attic. Its facade follows a regular plan of windows and the entrance doorway is of round arch with keystones and cavities of sand stone -Mallorcan marés. On one of the sides, there is a sun clock with no inscription. Other outstanding elements are the olive oil mill and the oven on the back courtyard. 

Clot d'Almadrà bridge

The map of Cardenal Antoni Despuig from 1784 draws a route of certain importance that just before arriving to Almadrà valley, crosses the torrent of the same name through a paved ford. Ot this point, a bridge is raised before arriving to the houses of Son Ordines, Casa d'Amunt and Can Xalet. The bridge is still on the same place, supported by considerable wide pillars, which indicates the torrent had and has important flood peaks. From the three round arches, two of them have similar dimensions (2,70 meters high by 3,65 meters wide), while the third one is a bit smaller (2,40 meters high by 2,60 meters wide). Arches are built  with stone in its base, vaults are of sand stone -Mallorcan marés- and the rest of the face combines stone with mortar. Among the two identical arches a cutwater was built to divide and cut the water stream. Can Xalet is the second of the hamlet buildings from the 17th and 18th centuries. It is a manor house of three floors with an irregular distribution of its doors and windows. Entrance doorways are sited on the right side of the facade: a first round arched doorway with big stone keystones to enter the facade and a second architrave doorway with base, jambs and moulding capitals of stone to enter the chapel, which is decorated with Baroque paintings.

Almost all the facade details are finished with stone. From the Arab tile roof, we can observe a pointed arch belfry standing out. Premises for farming works are perpendicular to the facade and now completely abandoned. Facing the straw loft we find a cistern that supplied the house with water in the past. Completing the triangle, we arrive to Son Ordines d'Almadrà, a building from the 17th century. The outside doorway, sited asymmetrically to the facade side is crowned by a round arch with stone lintel with forged iron decorative elements on the top. The outside doorway of the farmhouse crosses a vestibule protected by an arch that connects with the courtyard.  Houses are organized around this paved quadrangular courtyard were we find the manor houses, a chapel from the 18th century, the olive oil mill and the farming premises.  On the right side of the outside doorway, we can observe five windows with forged iron lattice and framed with stone. On the first floor, the house facade has four window balconies. The porch, on the third floor, has five oblong relief windows. Above the vestibule that communicates with the outside doorway and the courtyard, we find a terrace with an iron balustrade.  The olive oil mill, of rectangular floor plan and soil ground, is at the end of the patio with the date '1769' in its doorway. The press is modern as the mill is hydraulic and has metallic elements.   Next to the olive oil mill, we find the place where olive oil was stored. In the center of the patio, the top part of a cistern.

Walking up to Castell d'Alaró we find the old estate of Arab origin called Es Verger. It is a large piece of land, nowadays divided into four properties. The houses of the estate are organized around three annexed buildings, the first of which was before a farming premises and now is reconverted into a popular restaurant serving traditional Mallorcan food. Among the elements worth outstanding we find a flour mill -from which some pieces are preserved-, part of an olive oil mill -of mechanical press- and an oven.

The olive oil mill preserves the old olive storing deposits, some sinks covered by half-barrel vaults and on the annexed room, stone and ceramic sinks to store olive oil. It is widely known that Es Verger produced a very appreciated olive oil for its high quality. Es Verger also houses water devices on the back side of the houses, along Pouet way: a cistern, a well and a reservoir. 

The estate of Alcadena is sited on the southern area of the Puig de s'Alcadena, mountain that gives name to the possessió. Houses are organized around a paved courtyard like most of the hamlets of Alaró: the house of the landlords, the olive oil mill and a series of old farming premises, stables and the picker's houses, nowadays rehabilitated into warehouses.

We enter the courtyard through a doorway with architrave of stone and wood ashlars. The facade is organized into three floors with a regular disposition of the apertures. The original wooden entrance doorway is a round arch built with sand stone -Mallorcan marés- with jambs and lintel carved in stone. All the apertures of the main facade are framed with stone ashlars.

On the left side of the main facade, there is a portico of wooden beams, supported with decorated columns. Inside this portico, we find a small stone sculpture personifying a Virgin -on the wall facing the house of the landlords- and stone sinks. A doorway with lintel takes us to the olive oil mill, where the main elements are still preserved: a chute, a roller, a pole, the balk, the boiler for warming up the water and a big stone sink of quadrangular plan were oil was decanted.

Crossing the outside doorway, we find a vestibule with a segmented arch that communicates with the central courtyard. On its left, we find the entrance to the oratory, where an altarpiece from 1712 is preserved.

The main house is oriented to the southeast and is organized into ground floor, main floor and attic. Walls are made of stone and mortar while the facade exhibits an outstanding round stone doorway with voussoirs.

Facing the house, we find the old warehouse habilitated as a living room. The doorway is an architrave made of stone jambs and lintels with a sun clock placed above it. Only breeding of Mallorcan ovine race remains from the fore farming activities of the possessió. The olive oil mill preserves the millstone and the houses also count with a covered Arab cistern and two fountains.

The main building -the one that corresponded to the landlords- is worth a look as some of the room ceilings have cross vaults covered with beams. We also find hydraulic tiles along the corridor and some of the rooms. In the middle of the center courtyard, there is a fountain of octagonal floor plan over a circular base with a cistern of Gothic neck. Stone olive oil storing sinks can be spotted in the old olive oil mill with the date of '1638' craved in its doorway.

Son Bergues is a possessió from the 17th century that was reconstructed by architect Carles Garau Tornabells, following the Regionalist postwar 50s style.

During the 18th century the house of Berga passed to Can Vallès d'Almadrà and later to the marquises of Solleric. The houses of the estate are grouped around a courtyard, including the farming and animal premises. 

Above the outside stone round arch doorway, a sun clock stands up. On the same wall, we find a Renaissance window sheltering the coat of arms of Berga family. The houses are grouped around the courtyard: houses of the landlords, houses of the farmhouse tenants, the granary and a carob house. 

Almost all the apertures facing the courtyard exhibit lintels and are framed with sand stone -Mallorcan marés- and molding ledge. During the renewal, a closed balcony supported by corbels and round apertures was built.

The entrance doorway to the landlord house belongs to Renaissance style: fine columns of classical order over plinths that support a lintel with the Berga family emblem carved into sand stone on the center. Above it, a niche with the figure of Sant Antoni.

There are different entrances to the rooms from the courtyard: an outside stairway annexed to the wall and a marés stilted arch doorway with a bridge of covered pass groined vault.  A line of buttress and a stone bench from side to side of the doorway are sited on the back facade, facing the terraced garden, which is almost crossed by a stone stairway. A water network was created to collect rainwater taking advantage of the garden land slope. We find a well, a reservoir, Arab cisterns and canals for water storage and irrigation of the orchard.

The annexed farmhouse premises preserve the same building style as the rest of the complex and have been recently converted for agrotourism. Son Berga was described by Archiduc Lluís Salvador: A little Renaissance window and a round arch doorway dominated by a sun clock dated from 1756 are the emblems of this possessió. It is worth mentioning the small courtyard with Bergues coat of arms and the small chapel. Facing the entrance, next to the vegetable bed, a haughty hackberry raises'.