Ibiza Dalt Vila walled old town
— the white town the sea light climbs at evening.
Not only on a wall.
Ibiza Dalt Vila walled old town, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
Each tile ships in a kraft box, tied with cream ribbon, with a handwritten note from the studio if you'd like to add one.
Three or five different vistas, hung together — a chapter of places you've been, or want to go.
“The old town of Ibiza sits on a hill above the port, ringed by Renaissance bastions that have held since the 16th century. Inside the Portal de ses Taules the lanes climb in whitewash and limestone toward the cathedral on the summit, past Phoenician foundations, a Gothic chapel, and balconies hung with bougainvillea. The island below is loud in August; up here it stays the colour and pace of a Mediterranean village, and the light off the Salt Pans turns the walls amber for about twenty minutes after sunset. from the studio
The place, in three passes.
Dalt Vila is the walled upper town of Ibiza city (Eivissa) in the Balearic Islands, declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1999 as part of "Ibiza, Biodiversity and Culture." The fortifications were built between 1554 and 1585 under Philip II to a design by the Italian engineer Giovanni Battista Calvi and his successor Jacobo Paleazzo Fratin, and are one of the most complete examples of Renaissance bastioned military architecture in the Mediterranean. Seven bastions ring the hill, enclosing a Gothic cathedral on the summit, a Moorish-era street plan, and Phoenician archaeological layers below.
The walls are local sandstone, faced with limestone at the gates and finished with the white lime wash that gives the Balearics their look. The main entrance, the Portal de ses Taules, is a 1585 stone gate flanked by two Roman statues recovered from earlier ruins on the site. Inside, the climb to the Cathedral of Santa Maria passes through five concentric layers of street, each one older than the next: Renaissance bastion, Spanish baroque, Catalan Gothic, Moorish lane, and Phoenician foundation. The whole hill is sometimes called the most layered square kilometre in the western Mediterranean.
Dalt Vila faces south-west over the harbour and the Salinas salt pans, which means the last sun of the day strikes the bastions full-on. For roughly twenty minutes after the sun goes behind Sa Talaia, the whitewashed walls hold an amber-gold cast while the sea below turns indigo. The viewpoint at the Bastion of Santa Llúcia gives the cleanest sight-line; the small terrace at the Cathedral square gives the longest. Most of the photographs that have made the old town famous were taken in this window, not at midday.
