The only small town in the northeast that is not a coastal settlement. Artà lies inland beneath the sanctuary of Sant Salvador — and at the same time owns one of the last stretches of coast on the island where nothing was ever built.
Source: INE, Padrón Continuo · 2026-08-22
Artà is the town for people whose first question is not “how far to the beach?”. A small sandstone town grown around a hill crowned by the fortified sanctuary of Sant Salvador — you can see it from almost every street, and the stairway up to it is the walk you show guests first.
Artà does not live off the tourism of a beach promenade, because it has none. Instead it has what coastal resorts often lack: everyday life. The weekly market on Tuesdays fills the town into its side lanes, there are galleries, craft workshops, a theatre — and shops that are open in February just as they are in August.
On the edge of town, Ses Païsses is one of the best-preserved Talayotic settlements on the island — this area was settled in the Bronze Age, and the town wears that depth visibly.
The surprise about Artà: the municipality has a long coastline — and almost none of it is built on. A large part of the municipal territory lies within the Llevant Peninsula natural park. Coves like Cala Torta and Cala Estreta are reached on unpaved tracks, and at the end of them stands not a hotel but nothing at all.
The one exception is the Colònia de Sant Pere on the Bay of Alcúdia: a small, quiet coastal village belonging to the municipality, twelve kilometres from the main town.
For a buyer, this is the real equation: in Artà you do not buy a sea view from your living room. You buy a townhouse or a finca — and fifteen minutes later you are standing on a coastline that has not changed in decades and, thanks to the natural park, will not.
The old centre is made of natural-stone townhouses, often narrow and deep, with courtyards and roof terraces from which you see Sant Salvador. The offer ranges from unrenovated shells to fully restored houses — the spread is wider here than in the coastal villages.
The countryside is one of the island’s classic finca landscapes: country houses among holm oaks and almond fields, increasingly solitary towards the Ermita de Betlem. If you want land around you, you look here — not on the coast.
Artà had 8,062 registered residents in 2022, against 7,553 in 2011 — plus seven percent, which makes Artà different from its neighbours: Capdepera stagnated over the same period, Son Servera shrank.
The registered foreign population stood at 1,495 in 2011, fell to 1,102 by 2017 and is 1,333 today — a share of around 17 percent, the lowest in the region. Artà has stayed more Spanish than the coast, and you can feel it in the town.
The figures come from the Padrón Continuo of the Spanish statistics office and count registered residents — second homes do not appear in them. They describe the town, not the market.
From our office in Cala Ratjada, Artà is fifteen minutes away. What clients ask us for most are two things: restored townhouses in the centre and fincas in the countryside. Both are markets where the differences sit in the detail — registered extensions, water rights, access tracks — and that is exactly where a partner who inspects properties in person earns their keep.
New ETV licences are not currently being issued on Mallorca. What matters is therefore not the location but whether the individual property carries an existing one. Every property of ours states it in the key facts.
Guide to the holiday rental licenceBuying on Mallorca rarely takes weeks. Tell us what you are looking for — we get in touch when something fitting comes up, and no more often than that.
Population figures are official, from the INE. Market observations are our own and are not statistics.
