The Palma Cathedral is a church made of stone. Outside the Palma Cathedral.

While inside the amazing Cathedral, we also learned about how it was built. During the early 1200's, the island of Mallorca belonged to the Moors of Northern Africa. Jaume the first, King of Aragon, sailed to Mallorca, intending to retake it. During a terrible storm, Juame promised that if he made it to land safely, he would build a magnificent cathedral in the name of Virgin Mother Mary. You can probably guess what cathedral that was! That's right, in 1229, Juame started construction of the Palma Cathedral. But it was only completed in 1601. It took almost four hundred years to complete the cathedral!

While we had to pay money to enter the cathedral, going inside to attend religious services is free. The Palma Cathedral was used for many services and religious events in the Middle Ages. The Cathedral was used a lot because up till that point, most churches had thick walls and small windows, allowing little light in, making churches very dark. The Palma Cathedral on the other hand had large stained glass windows and lights and candles. The new cathedral influenced more people to build churches that looked similar. These churches are called the Gothic cathedrals. The beautiful churches became popular in the 12th century.

After the Palma cathedral was finished in the sixteenth century, it was enriched with paintings and sculptures in the 17th and 18th century. In 1851, an earthquake destroyed a large part of the cathedral, but when we went inside, we noticed that the cathedral was almost completely reconstructed. An architect named Antonio Gaudi spent more then ten years working on the Palma Cathedral, and a painter named Miquel Barcelo contributed many paintings to the cathedral.