Alcudia

The town of Alcudia nestles along the southern part of the bay of Pollensa and behind mountainous headlands.

In addition to the town itself are the small resorts and areas of Barcares, Mal Pas, Bonaire, Coll Baix and Alcanada, the latter a quiet extension of Puerto Alcudia. Alcudia is an historic town with Roman, Byzantine and Moorish influences; it takes its name from the Arabic for “the hill”.

The Roman town is a significant archaeological site, dating from the late second ury BC, the exact date being put at 123BC when Pollentia (its name) was founded by Quinto Cecilio Metelo (after whom a rather uncharming street has been named). Pollentia was subsequently subject to development and destruction in fairly equal measure, and from the third century there was a lengthy period of “decadencia”, which means as it sounds in English but also translates as decline, though one suspects there was fair degree of decadence too. Nowadays it is possible to determine the general shape he town and its street layout as well as the forum and temples.

The Roman theatre followed some while after the founding of Pollentia, at the end of the first century AD to be precise (or rather to be fairly imprecise). It exhibits three elements that demonstrate itwas indeed a Roman theatre and not a Greek one, as was initially thought when it was excavated in the early 1950s; these elements being - the “cavea” (the terraced seating) in a semicircular form, the “orchestra” and the wooden “scaena” (stage), raised slightly higher than the orchestra in front of it.

There is also another eting from Roman times, Portella. This was a residential area which appears to have been developed in the first century AD and a wall added around the third century.

No archaeological site worth its name can do without its own museum, and so the Museo Monográfico de Pollentia was established in 1987 in what was an old hospital.

Away from the town itself heading north there are a number of possibilities forwalks or for cycle trips into the mountainous area, to Coll Baix and to the Hermitage of LaVictoria. This whole area is in stark contrast to the development of Puerto Alcudia: peaceful, scenic and indicative of the “unseen Mallorca”.