Valldemossa

Valldemossa is the most photographed village in Mallorca and it deserves to be – honey-coloured stone, green shutters, lanes so narrow two people have to turn sideways, and a pot of geraniums outside every single door. It sits in a fold of the Tramuntana about twenty minutes from Palma, which is exactly the problem: between about half past ten and four, it belongs to the coaches.

Come early and it is a different place entirely. The lanes are wet from being hosed down, the bakeries are pulling trays out, and you can hear your own footsteps. That hour is worth getting up for.

And there is more here than the photographs suggest: a fourteenth-century royal palace turned Carthusian monastery, a winter that produced one of the great sets of piano music, Mallorca’s only saint, and a bun made of potato that you will think about afterwards.