Palma Cathedral (La Seu)

How to visit without tripping over the hours

La Seu rises straight out of the seafront, and from the Parc de la Mar pools below it reflects in the water for free — which is why a lot of people photograph it and never go in. That’s the mistake. The €14 standard ticket (about £12, and it covers the Museum of Sacred Art too) buys you the interior Antoni Gaudí restructured between 1904 and 1914: he pulled the choir out of the central nave to open it up, unblocked the bricked-over windows for light, and hung an enormous baldachin canopy over the altar — the suspended-crown idea he later carried into the Sagrada Família.

The catch is the timetable, not the booking. La Seu is closed to tourist visits on Sundays (Mass only), and it shuts mid-afternoon rather than at dusk — roughly 17:15 on summer weekdays, but only 15:15 in winter, and just past 14:00 on Saturdays year-round. You rarely need to pre-book; a door ticket is fine on most weekdays. The one time advance booking pays off is when several cruise ships are docked and the queue stacks up — a timed slot skips most of it. Allow about an hour inside.

The light show, the terraces, and is it worth it?

Two mornings a year — 2 February and 11 November, around 08:00–08:30 — the sun comes through the main rose window (nearly 14 metres across, the second-largest surviving Gothic rose window anywhere) and throws a second, mirrored rosette onto the wall below the window opposite. Locals call it the figure of eight, and it lasts under ten minutes. It’s free with normal entry but pulls a crowd, so arrive early — the cathedral opens its doors at 07:30 on these two days. There’s also a separate guided rooftop-terraces ticket at around €20, running roughly May to October — worth it for the views over the bay if you like a climb, skippable otherwise.

This is one of the more rewarding cathedral entries in Spain, precisely because it isn’t a plain Gothic box — Gaudí’s hand makes the inside worth the money. Go on a weekday morning, pair it with the Royal Palace of La Almudaina directly across the road and a wander through the old town, and don’t leave it for Sunday or you won’t get in.