Sant Francesc Xavier

Sant Francesc Xavier grew the way most of Formentera did: slowly, and spread out. For generations, islanders built isolated farmhouses on their individual plots of land, oriented south or south-east to catch the sun. It was only towards the end of the nineteenth century and into the twentieth that a more recognisable village began to take shape, as houses started clustering around the main church and the tracks leading to it.

Those tracks became streets, and the buildings that lined them faced the road rather than the sun — a shift that changed the look of island architecture. The houses going up in the 1920s and 1930s had larger, more decorated openings, often framed with borders painted in blue or brown. Three buildings from that era still stand in the neighbourhood: Bar Centro, the Fonda Platé, and Can Manolo, all representative of this transitional moment in Formentera's built history.

The town's main church is the Església de Sant Francesc Xavier. Nearby are the Capella de sa Tanca Vella and the windmills of Sa Miranda, which now house the Museu Etnològic de Formentera.

The municipal library holds a collection of volumes from the old "Casa de Llibres", a bookshop-library founded by Bob Baldon in Sant Ferran that later became the International Library. Its contents document the hippie era on Ibiza and Formentera, giving it a particular historical value beyond its titles.

The town celebrates Sant Jaume, patron of Formentera, on 25 July, and its own patron Sant Francesc Xavier on 3 December.