Palma, formerly Palma de Mallorca, is the largest city of the Balearic Islands and the capital of the autonomous community of the Spanish group of islands.
The city is located in a bay in the west of the island of Mallorca. It was founded in 123 B.C. by the Roman consul Quintus Caecilius Metellus. Over the centuries the city was under different rulers. In 1343 Mallorca fell back to the Aragonese, later it was absorbed in the Spanish kingdom.
After the Second World War in the 1950s, the city developed into a popular destination for mass tourism. Today, several million tourists visit the city every year. Located east of the city centre, the islands airport handles around 28 million passengers a year.
This boom is also clearly reflected in the city’s population. In the 1940s, around 120,000 people lived in the city, today over 400,000 people call Palma their home.
