The cells and Chopin's piano
The rooms they occupied are shown with their belongings and manuscripts.
dronepicr — CC BY 2.0 · dronepicr — CC BY 2.0 · MARIA ROSA FERRE ✿ — CC BY-SA 2.0 · dronepicr — CC BY 2.0
It helps but is not required. The complex is a historic monastery in its own right with the pharmacy, the church and the gardens, and the town is lovely. Anyone who knows the music finds an extra layer; anyone who does not still finds a mountain monastery worth visiting.
A regular bus from Palma takes about half an hour, or by car on a beautiful mountain road. Arriving early matters, because tour coaches come at midday and change the character of the town entirely.
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A former Carthusian monastery in the mountain town of Valldemossa, famous internationally because the composer Frédéric Chopin and the French writer George Sand spent the winter of 1838 and 1839 here after the monastery had been emptied of its monks. The stay was miserable: the weather was damp and cold, Chopin was ill with tuberculosis, and the townspeople treated the couple with hostility. Sand wrote a caustic book about Mallorca and its people out of the experience, and Chopin composed some of his most important work here despite the conditions. That contradiction is what makes the visit interesting. The cells they occupied are shown today with Chopin's piano, manuscripts and belongings, alongside the monastery's old pharmacy with its ceramic jars, its church and its gardens looking over the valley. The town itself is among the loveliest in the Tramuntana and deserves a walk afterwards. Access is by bus from Palma or by car in about half an hour, and the mountain road is beautiful in itself.
The rooms they occupied are shown with their belongings and manuscripts.
The monastery pharmacy with its ceramic jars survives, among the finest things in the complex.
The weather, the illness and local hostility — the story is far harsher than its romantic image.
Valldemossa, Tramuntana mountains, about seventeen kilometres from Palma