에스 카스텔 최고의 워킹 & 하이킹 경로

Picture time with view

This square has up to three names: Plaça Menorca, de Joan Ferrer i Franch or del Mirador. The town takes its name from the castle of Sant Felip, near which the primitive nucleus was located. The fortress was ordered to be built in response to the Turkish danger, after Khair ed-Din Barbarossa attacked Maó in 1535, in retaliation for the conquest of Tunis (the corsair's lair) by Emperor Charles V a few months earlier. In 1558, the castle's fortifications were already artillery and it was possible to repel an Ottoman attack. This encouraged many Maó residents to seek refuge near the castle walls and end up forming a permanent inhabited nucleus that grew over the years and was known as s'Arraval de sant Felip. It should be remembered that s Castell, as also happens with Sant Climent and Sant Lluís, has a fully planned urban origin, based on a military engineering concept. From the second half of the 20th century onwards, urban development has not taken place like in the rest of the island's towns, in a radial manner around the original nucleus, but rather by forming amoeboid satellite areas. At any point in the large square we can use texts by Àngel Ruiz i Pablo, by Josep Pin i Soler that describe a town quite different from the one we have today, and two fragments of Manuel Cuyàs's memoirs that reflect the environment he lived in while doing his military service there.

The central talayot is one of the largest on the island

That's how the name appears on the map.

The village was home to generations of peasant families who based their economy on the control of flocks of goats, sheep, cows and pigs, complemented by the cultivation of cereals and legumes. Towards the 5th century BC, transformations took place in the Talayotic society, possibly related to the exchange of products and knowledge with the Carthaginian world, mainly through ships from the Punic colony of Ibiza. The original structure of the village was altered in 1781, when the Duke of Crillón established his military camp there during the siege of the Castle of San Felipe by Franco-Spanish troops, which was defended by the English army.

The great talayot, with a base measuring 26 metres in diameter, is one of the largest in the Balearic Islands. Through various archaeological interventions, it has been determined that the chronology of the settlement spans from the beginning of the Talayotic period (1200 BC) to the 3rd century BC, when it was violently destroyed and abandoned during the Second Punic War between the Romans and the Carthaginians. Some spaces continued to be used in the Andalusian period (902-1287).

Typical stone monument of the Talayotic culture. The process involved raising a vertical stone, possibly using a ramp of earth and stones to place a horizontal stone on top. These enclosures are found in large Talayotic villages and are thought to have had a religious function, possibly related to rituals involving fire, wine and animal offerings to the divinities. The vertical stone of the taula can exceed 10,000 kg, indicating the great effort and community participation necessary for its construction.

Great place for a rest stop and picnic