Costitx

At 130 metres above sea level, Costitx sits just high enough for the Tramuntana peaks to shimmer on the horizon while the Mediterranean remains stubbornly invisible. This is Mallorca's agricultural heartland—the Pla—where almond orchards replace beach umbrellas and the loudest sound at midday is the mechanical whirr of irrigation sprinklers. The village proper houses barely 1,200 souls, though its administrative boundaries sweep across enough farmland to feed most of them.

The place announces itself with windmills rather than church bells. Approaching from the Ma-3240, you pass stone towers crowned with rusting iron vanes, still drawing water for the surrounding tomato and melon fields. They're not picturesque relics; farmers phone the maintenance man when a bearing seizes, same as any other piece of kit. That functional honesty sets the tone for everything that follows.

Bronze bulls and starlight

Costitx's moment of archaeological glory arrived in 1894 when a ploughing farmer hit something hard. What emerged were three bronze bulls, each no larger than a labrador, cast by Talayotic islanders around 300 BC. The originals now glare at visitors in Madrid's National Archaeological Museum, but excellent replicas occupy a corner of the Mallorca Planetarium on the village edge. The planetarium itself is the reason most outsiders make the detour: a modern dome that punches above its weight with weekend sessions in English, solar telescopes for daytime sun-spotting, and serious astrophotography workshops when the moon is dark. Reserve online; walk-ins are turned away when clouds roll in, which happens more often than the website admits.

Winter brings sharper skies. From November to February the planetarium opens at 18:00, letting you finish dinner in Palma and still reach Costitx before Orion clears the eastern horizon. Summer sessions start two hours later and end with the Perseid meteor shower in August, when staff simply tilt back the dome and hand out folding chairs. Bring a fleece whatever the season—night temperatures drop 8-10 °C below the coast.

A plateful of the Pla

Forget sea views; here the menu is the landscape. Breakfast means thick tomato-rubbed bread (pa amb oli) topped with mild white cheese or sobrasada that stains the chin like a ripe peach. Es Recó de Costitx does a roasted shoulder of lamb for Sunday lunch that falls from the bone at the nudge of a spoon, served with proper chips rather than the usual Spanish crisps. Vegetarians aren't an afterthought: tumbet—layers of fried aubergine, potato and red pepper baked under a tomato cloak—arrives sizzling in its own clay dish. Locals eat at 14:30; turn up earlier and the kitchen is still prepping.

The Saturday market occupies a triangle of pavement by the church between 08:00 and 13:00. Stalls sell jars of honey crystallised around almond slivers, strings of dried peppers, and plastic cups of fresh orange juice that cost €2 if you stand still, €1.50 if you keep walking. Most shoppers are neighbours; the woman ahead will probably pass you again later, steering a tiny Seat down lanes barely wider than a Tesco trolley aisle.

Walking without waymarks

Costitx is criss-crossed by camí vells—old farm tracks—rather than signed hiking trails. That suits walkers who prefer birdsong to branded signage. A favourite circuit heads south-west for 4 km to the abandoned Possessió de Binicanella, a manor house whose stone archway collapsed in last winter's storms. The route is flat, stony and shade-free; set off before 09:00 between May and September or you'll share the track only with overheated sheepdogs.

Cyclists get the better deal. The Pla's grid of quiet lanes means you can pedal 30 km and climb barely 200 m, rare in Mallorca. Bike hire in Sineu (7 km east) will lend you a hybrid for €18 a day and throw in a route sheet that uses farm tracks to link three medieval villages before depositing you back at the station for the 18:05 train to Palma. Drivers still outnumber bikes, yet traffic volume is measured in dozens rather than hundreds. Carry water; the only bar between Costitx and Sineu opens unpredictably.

The logistics of quiet

Public transport exists but only just. TIB bus 304 leaves Palma's Estació Intermodal at 15:15 and reaches Costitx 55 minutes later after threading through Binissalem's vineyards. The return service departs at 07:10 and 17:10—miss the evening run and a taxi from Sineu costs €18 if you can persuade the driver to come out. Sunday has no service at all; the village belongs to residents and rental-car visitors.

Accommodation splits into two categories: stone agroturismos down dirt tracks, and a single row of modern townhouses on the eastern approach. The fincas offer pools fed by mountain spring water that stays "refreshing" even in July; think Lake District with cicadas. Wi-Fi can vanish for hours when the farmer next door fires up his milking vacuum, a gentle reminder that you're sleeping in a workplace, not a hotel. Book dinner half-board—after-dark walks along unlit lanes feel longer than they measure.

When to come, when to stay away

Spring is the sweet spot. From mid-March the almond blossom has gone, leaving bright green nuts the size of olives, while daytime temperatures hover around 20 °C—perfect for cycling without the salt-lick sweat of high summer. The Fira de Flors on the first May Saturday turns the main street into a scented tunnel of geraniums and wild rosemary; it's busy by village standards, yet you can still park within 200 m of the church.

August is the reverse. The Pla absorbs heat like a clay oven, nudging 38 °C by late afternoon. Farmers start at dawn and siesta through the glare; visitors who ignore the same timetable end up sun-struck on shadeless tracks. The planetarium remains the one evening refuge, but even its telescope domes exhale warm air long after sunset.

The honest verdict

Costitx won't keep you busy for a week. A morning, an overnight and a star-gazing session amount to the optimum hit-rate, especially if you combine it with Sineu's Wednesday livestock market or a wine-tasting slot in nearby Binissalem. What the village does offer is a counterweight to Mallorca's coastal clamour: the smell of newly-cut alfalfa drifting through open car windows, the low hum of a tractor that hasn't quite made it into the twenty-first century, night skies dark enough to remind you why the Milky Way earned its name. Treat it as a breather between beach days and it delivers; expect postcard perfection and the windmills will simply look old, not alive.