Monument a Frédéric Chopin — Attraction in Valldemossa

Amazing place 🎹❤️to visit in Valldemossa! FRÉDÉRIC CHOPIN (1838-39)

He was born in Żelazowa Wola, close to Warsaw (Poland) in 1810. In a state of fragile health, in Autumn 1838 he travelled to Mallorca with the French writer George Sand and her children on board the ship El Mallorquín. They were undoubtedly the most famous couple in Paris during that period. First, they stayed in Son Vent (Establiments), and soon afterwards they moved to the Charterhouse of Valldemossa. They were enchanted by the landscape and living in a vast and empty Charterhouse with one cemetery, inspired their romantic fantasy.

“I shall certainly go to live in an enchanting Charterhouse in the most beautiful country in the world; sea, mountains, palm trees, a cemetery, a church dating back to the Crusades, the ruins of a mosque, thousand-year-old olive trees…! Now, dear friend, I am enjoying life a little more, I am very close to the most beautiful things in the world, I am a better man.” (Chopin)

The downside was that the cold and moist microclimate of Valldemossa, was very harmful for Chopin´s illness. Tuberculosis, the backward attitude of Mallorcan society, the fact that the couple did not attend church, and lived in a sacred place without being married, the rumours about whether George Sand smoked cigarettes and her trouser wearing, everything led to the locals...

Dentro de la hermosa villa de Valldemossa, esta es la principal de las atracciones; tanto por su enclave natural, como por su soberbia arquitectura y por las personalidades que supo albergar a lo largo de su muy dilatada historia. Si bien la pareja romántica de Chopin y G.Sand se lleva todas las palmas, también hay que recordar que este complejo fue residencia de dos reyes mallorquines, de Jovellanos, y ya en el siglo XX de Rubén Darío, Unamuno, Azorín, Eugeni d´Ors y Jorge Luis Borges. Es además muy completa la muestra de las actividades de los monjes cartujos que lo habitaron durante varios siglos, y entre ellas sobresale la botica, con una colección de porcelanas catalanas sorprendente. Vayan advertidos que para ver la celda Nº4, que fuera de Chopin y G. Sand, hay que pagar 4 euros extra, y que no es conveniente ir demasiado cerca del cierre (18.30 hs en la semana, 14 hs...

A bust of Frédéric Chopin is in a garden at Valldemossa on Mallorca, Spain. Chopin composed many of his best known works while living with writer George Sand in a suite of cells in the former Carthusian monastery here during the winter...