Eivissa

The Phoenicians founded the city around 654 BC on the hill of Vila, overlooking the bay and port, naming it Ibosim. Greeks had visited before them but never settled. Prehistoric remains on the island — at Puig de Ses Torretes on Ibiza and the megalithic tomb of Ca na Costa and the settlement of Cap de Barbaria II on Formentera — point to human presence as far back as the second millennium BC.

Under Roman rule the city was known as Èbusus, and during the reign of Augustus as Insula Augusta. The Arabs called it Yebisah. In 1235 Catalan forces conquered the island and divided it into four quarters among the new occupants, while the town itself was held in common.

The 1715 Nova Planta decrees abolished the Universitat d'Eivissa, the island's self-governing institution, replacing it with a municipal council whose powers were sharply reduced and whose president was a military governor appointed by the Royal Court of Mallorca. The city also lost its main source of wealth: the salt flats, which passed to the royal treasury. The council's seat moved from the old Universitat building — today the Archaeological Museum of Dalt Vila on the Plaça de la Torreta — to the former Dominican convent, where it remains.

In 1782 King Carlos III granted the town the title of city. Among the privileges this brought was its own bishopric, ending five centuries of dependence on the diocese of Tarragona. The island was divided into 18 municipalities in 1789, creating the municipality of the Ciutat d'Eivissa. Formentera was incorporated into this municipality before being separated off as its own municipality in 1888. In 1979, as part of a broader process of linguistic normalisation, the official name was changed from Ciudad de Ibiza back to Eivissa.

The walled upper town of Dalt Vila is Eivissa's defining landmark. In 1999 UNESCO declared it a World Heritage Site, a designation that also covers the necropolis of Puig des Molins, the Phoenician settlement of Sa Caleta in the neighbouring municipality of Sant Josep de sa Talaia, and the Posidonia seagrass meadows of the natural park of Ses Salines.

The fortifications themselves were built on the orders of King Philip II, in response to the threat posed by an alliance between Ottoman and French forces against the Spanish empire. Work began in 1555 to designs by Italian engineer Giovanni Battista Calvi, using the new bastion system built for artillery. The original scheme included six bastions: Santa Tecla, Sant Bernat, Sant Jordi, Sant Jaume, Sant Pere, and Sant Joan. A seventh was added in 1575 at the hill of Santa Llúcia. The main gate — the Portal de ses Taules, named for the wooden drawbridge planks that once defended it — is flanked by two Roman statues. Above the gate sits a large stone coat of arms bearing the emblems of Philip II and the town, along with a commemorative inscription dated 1585.

At the summit of Dalt Vila stands the Cathedral of Santa Maria. After the Catalan conquest a church was consecrated on this spot, and a Gothic replacement with a rectangular nave and polygonal apse was built in the mid-fifteenth century. The bell tower, trapezoidal in plan, massive in form and decorated with pointed windows, survives from that Gothic period. Early in the eighteenth century the nave was rebuilt after falling into disrepair. When the bishopric was created in 1782, the parish church was elevated to a cathedral. The Diocesan Museum occupies the sacristy and adjacent rooms.

The former Dominican convent, now the town hall, has a single wide nave covered by a barrel vault with mural paintings and five chapels on each side. It is the only church on the island with a cloister.

The necropolis of Puig des Molins was used from the sixth century BC through to the Roman imperial period. Around 3,000 burials have been found here, mostly hypogea — underground chambers cut into the rock and reached by a vertical shaft. Declared a Historic-Artistic Monument in 1931, the site is accompanied by the Monographic Museum of Puig des Molins at the foot of the hill.

Ibiza has one main airport, which adds many charter and low-cost flights in summer — mainly from the UK, Italy, and Germany — operated by Ryanair, Jet2.com, easyJet, and TUI. Winter services are mostly to other Balearic islands and mainland Spain via Iberia and its subsidiaries. A tourist information centre is located inside the airport terminal, with further offices in Ibiza town and the larger resorts.

Bus Line 10 connects the airport to Eivissa (Ibiza Town); Line 9 runs directly to Sant Antoni; Line 24 serves other popular resorts. Worth trying locally: ensaimada (a soft, coiled pastry) and flao (a sweet cheese and mint flan), both sold in most pastelerías and many bars.