Formentor Lighthouse
Faro de Formentor
Interesting facts
- The light was first lit on 30 April 1863, after building work that had begun in 1857 under the engineer Emili Pou.
- Its original lamp burned olive oil; the first optical apparatus was later replaced and reused in the La Mola lighthouse on Formentera.
- Mallorcans call Cap de Formentor the meeting point of the winds, a name earned by the gusts that sweep across the exposed headland.
- The peninsula once belonged to the poet Miquel Costa i Llobera, whose poem The Pine of Formentor made one of its wind-bent trees famous.
- After the poet's death the peninsula was sold off in lots, and in 1928 the Argentine art lover Adan Diehl decided to build the Hotel Formentor there.
- Antoni Parietti, who engineered the Formentor road, also built the famous serpentine road down to Sa Calobra on Mallorca's north-west coast.
- A sea cave at Racó de Xot on the cape, about 90 metres long, is an important source for the prehistoric Talaiotic culture of Mallorca.
- The highest point of the Formentor peninsula, Fumat, rises to 384 metres above the sea.
Why it is worth it
The Formentor lighthouse sits at the very end of Mallorca's northernmost peninsula, a long, narrow ridge that runs out into the sea beyond the bay of Pollença. The tower itself is modest, but it stands on the top of cliffs so high that its light burns some 200 metres above the water — the highest lighthouse in the Balearic Islands. Around it the land falls away on three sides, and on clear days the view runs across the channel towards Menorca, over a sea that shifts from turquoise near the coves to deep blue offshore.
The light entered service in 1863, in the reign of Isabel II, and it was considered the most difficult lighthouse in the Balearics to build. There was no road then: materials had to be carried along rough mule tracks across the peninsula, and the keepers and their families who lived in the buildings attached to the tower led an isolated life at the tip of the cape. The light still works, guiding ships through one of the busy passages between Mallorca and Menorca, and it now runs on solar power.
Much of Formentor's fame comes from the journey. The serpentine road along the spine of the peninsula was engineered by Antoni Parietti in the 1920s and 1930s, and it threads between cliffs and pine-covered ridges, with the Mirador Es Colomer — also Parietti's design, and marked by a monument to him — looking down on the sheer drop to the sea and the islet of Es Colomer below. The drive ends at the lighthouse, where the reward is the long view back along the ridges of the peninsula.
Getting there
The cape is about 14 km in a straight line from Alcúdia and reached by road from Port de Pollença along the Ma-2210. Palma de Mallorca Airport (PMI) is about 61 km away as the crow flies.
On these lists
From the encyclopaedia
The Formentor or Cap de Formentor Lighthouse is an active lighthouse on the Spanish island of Majorca.
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