Museum Mallorca

The building housing the main headquarters of the Majorca Museum is Can Aiamans or Ca la Gran Cristiana. It was built on the base of two Gothic palaces when its promoter, Miquel Lluís Ballester de Togores i Salas, held the title of Count of Aiamans (1634). In 1775 the palace become property of the Villalonga-Desbrull family.

The house conserves much of the pentagon-shaped structure from the baroque period, altered only by some modifications made in the 1800s, and a few Gothic traces can also still be seen. Remains discovered below ground include architectural structures from the Moorish period.

It features a façade divided into three floors. The main door is a round arch, the floor has balconies with baroque wrought-iron railings and the porch windows have ogee arches in the Gothic tradition. In the middle of the façade is an 18th-century coat of arms of the Count of Aiamans.

This building was acquired by the State in 1971 to house the Majorca Museum. The first rooms opened to the public in 1976. This museum was created in 1961 with the collections from the old Museo Provincial de Bellas Artes, the Marroig collection, the State-owned archaeological collections and the holdings deposited by the  Societat Arqueològica Lul·liana and the Prado Museum.

Its permanent collection, which takes up the first and second floors, offers a look at the history of Majorca through its display of important works of archaeology and art. The rooms are arranged chronologically: Prehistory, Rome, Late Antiquity, Islam, Gothic, the Renaissance and Baroque periods and Contemporary.

It features an outstanding collection of pottery from different historical periods, a late-Roman columbarium, pre-Christian mosaics, a room of Gothic painting and sculpture, and one dedicated to the production of modernist ceramics of La Roqueta.

The museum also hosts temporary exhibits and educational and recreational activities. It has a library, a restoration workshop and important holdings on photography.