Joan Miró travel tips

Set dramatically by the sea and rooted in Moorish mystery, Palma de Mallorca is instant love.

Art in hotels, both to admire and to purchase, has become a strong focus in recent years. The Fife Arms in the Scottish Highlands has an impressive art collection including a giant Louise Bourgeois spider in the courtyard, 45 Park Lane in London has regularly changing exhibitions and art tours, Claridges has its own gallery with regularly changing shows, while La Residencia in Mallorca, Spain has 33 original pieces on display by Joan Miró. The luxurious Hotel Savoy, in Florence, is another hotel that takes art seriously by creating suites for artists to stay in and through hosting regular exhibitions in its public spaces.

When Regent Seven Seas Grandeur sets sail in November 2023, an impressive multimillion-dollar contemporary art collection with 1,600 works will offer guests a bespoke experience, akin to that of cruising on a floating museum.

Anthony Bourdain was a prolific chef, author, and TV personality who changed the world of travel and food. Today, five years after he committed suicide, there still hasn’t been anyone able to take his place in the culture, though many have tried. Throughout his career, Bourdain’s work emphasized cultural exchange, open-mindedness, and deep respect for the people he encountered in his travels in a way unlike any other, using food to bridge cultural gaps and explore the shared human experience.

Majorca, the largest of Spain’s Balearic Islands, has been a classic summer destination for Europeans and Brits for decades. But long before the big resorts sprung up along the coastline and villas came with helipads, the island’s hilltop villages attracted artists, musicians and writers in search of year-round sun and solitude. Among the best known of those early visitors were the Polish composer Frédéric Chopin and the French novelist George Sand, who spent the winter of 1838 in the town of Valldemossa, in the mountains above Majorca’s northwest coast. By 1929, when the British writer Robert Graves and the American poet Laura Riding arrived in the nearby village of Deià — at the recommendation of the American writer Gertrude Stein — and later built a home there, that picturesque hamlet of stone houses and olive groves was already a fledgling artists’ colony. In 1956, the Barcelona-born artist Joan Miró and his family moved to the outskirts of Palma. Plenty of artistic talent was homegrown, too, nurtured by generations of weavers, glassblowers and ceramists. One of Spain’s most prominent contemporary artists, Miquel Barceló, grew up on the island painting landscapes with his mother and her friends. Among the island’s many signature local crafts is the , or cloth of tongues, a style of ikat believed to have arrived from Asia centuries ago via the Silk Road. And it’s that deeply rooted artistic tradition combined with an extraordinary natural beauty that’s attracting the latest influx of creative types. In the last few years, a number of artists and designers have left larger cities in Europe and moved to Majorca. Some of these new arrivals are renovating old houses and farms in and around the country towns of Sóller and Deià or choosing to base themselves in Palma’s Old Townwhere Gothic spires loom over the port, and there’s a fresh wave of contemporary art galleries and idiosyncratic shops dedicated to supporting local artisans. All over the island, new or newly revived hotels compete for the most impressive views.

It’s a searing hot, noisy Saturday lunchtime at Mercado de Olivar. Chefs whirl like choreographed dancers, performing behind counters cooled by sheets of ice that are rapidly shrinking. Scallops sizzle in a plume of steam before running the gauntlet from hotplate to my plate, presented in a delicate pair of shells slick with garlicky olive oil. After two sweet mouthfuls, I’m ready for the next act.