Santa Eulària des Riu

Santa Eulària is a unique place to live, work and play. A pocket version of a utopian mini-city, lying right next to the Mediterranean.

What you’ll find here is a bustling urban vibe packed into a quaint seaside village, where lively coffee bars, healthy lunch spots, and year-round wining and dining will cater to your hedonist cravings.

But take a ten-minute walk from either point and you’ll find yourself lying on a beautiful beach, hiking in the campo or just enjoying the beautiful views high up the hills of Siesta.

When you do make the effort to take a walk down south, you can’t but be invited to climb up the steep and humbling hill of the Puig de Missa. Pause. As you walk up the ascending streets and staircases you’ll suddenly feel the true magic of this sacred place, different from any. Not one line is straight, not one wall is angular, perpendicular, parallel or any other term you had to study in geometry class. Around every corner, a completely different but equally astonishing vista shows up. A three-dimensional hilltop helix. An effortless architectural masterpiece.

Confusion kicks in as you suddenly realize you just left the ‘city centre’ but now find yourself in a new one. Same, but totally different. Paradox city.

On one side we have the commercial and residential inner town, economically master-planned on a New York -ish gridlike blueprint. One-way roads, large building blocks with flats and offices situated adjacent to a marina that was artificially built on reclaimed land. All man-made, urbanized and developed with a pre-thought planning strategy in mind.

Opposite we have the most organically and historically grown development you can imagine. Vernacular, cultural, religious and built to protect, worship and look out for invaders! In close harmony with and adapted to the topography of the surroundings with walls oozing tradition, cultural heritage and authenticity. This is as organic as it gets as no urban planner or architect’s ego came into play here. Just common sense, tradition and generational knowledge passed on word-of-mouth by the original Ibicenco inhabitants. A built Wikipedia.

This apparent contradiction between these two distinct urban models will always keep fascinating us, but here we just love how they are happily hugging each other in close harmony. Very Ibiza.

Credits:
Puig de Missa, Santa Eulària des Riu, Ibiza. Photo: Ana Lui Photography for Studio Go.