Sights in Manacor — 3 of Our Favourites

Located within the Rafa Nadel Sports Centre in Manacor, this interactive museum features a permanent display of Rafa Nadal’s trophies and memorabilia donated by prominent sports figures. The Rafa Nadal Museum Xperience is a new project in which Rafa Nadal has been heavily involved, providing his most important trophies for display (this is the first and only trophy exhibit of the tennis star that includes his career since he began playing - from child to present day).

This spectacular museum also offers a range of activities and experiences with high-tech simulators which include Formula1, Tennis, Rowing and Mountain Biking. There are interactive games, 360º virtual reality adventures (roller coasters, ski jumping, paragliding), holograms and naturally a section dedicated to this history of Tennis. The Rafa Nadel Sports-Xperience really does offer a new way to see and experience sports.

The museum is ideal for families and groups of friends looking for some great recreational activities where you can have fun, learn and feel what it is like to be a truly professional athlete.

Dating back to 1908, the actual building where the museum sits in dates back, in fact, to the 13th century and is a historical monument within itself. It is organised around a central courtyard and it showcases styles from different periods, including the older Gothic tower.

The museum was founded by a priest who found the early Christian basilica and the complex of Son Peretó, which he donated to the town of Manacor. It now showcases archaeological objects, agricultural machinery, farm tools, ancient chests of drawers, an early 20th-century printing press, coins from the Roman era up to our days...

This site seems to have been a cult place in the Islamic period. It is the place where, after the conquest of Jaume the First, the church of Santa Maria was situated. As this temple was very small, in the 14th century another one was built, which was finished in the 16th century. The main doorway, originally situated on the side of the bell-tower, dates from the end of the 18th century. This church was demolished to build the church we see today.

Some parts of the 18th century still remain, like the chapels of Sant Antoni and Sant Francesc, the towers of the ancient main façade at both sides of the bell-tower, part of the Mother of God sacristy and part of the old bell-tower. Built in negothic typology it has a latin-cross floor shaped one-hall basilica with chapels between the buttresses, with its transept arms in the fore section to the presbytery. There are ten aisles, five on every side, and in the chancel there is one chapel on every side and in the high altar. On every transept arm there are seven chapels, standing out the one consecrated to the Immaculate Virgin and the other to the Sant Crist of Manacor.