Traditional Ibizan Architecture

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Our Boutique Hotel Ses Pitreras is housed in a 70’s Ibicenco building wholly renewed like we already mentioned in a recent post.

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In Ses Pitreras, we provide you a contemporary space with the latest tendencies in interior design yet maintaining an Ibiza spirit. This is why we think it might be interesting to bring to our blog traditional ibizan architecture related information, it’s houses and estates. These characteristic and attractive constructions that can be seen along the island territory.

The typical Ibicenco houses (casas payesas), are mere simplicity, usually painted in that characteristic white colour of its walls. A sober architecture that has used traditional wisdom and that has been passed down from father to son, seeking subsistence and practicality.

The Ibicencos, in the old days, when starting a new construction, they followed a rigurous planning. The new house would be located in a high surface to avoid humidity and torrential rain, with a slight incline, leaving the mountain behind it so it would be protected from the Northern winds and the entry always facing south to perceive continuously the sunlight, helped by its thick walls which helps to keep a cool temperature during summer and a warm temperature in the winter.

Simple architecture, with a rectangular plant and straight lines which start with a main space to which other rooms or departments were attached depending on the different needs: bedrooms, kitchens, storehouses or sheds. The ceilings covered with Juniper beams and flat roofs to gather rainwater which was channeled through a cistern for its later consumption and use.

The walls are whitewashed and thick, yet sometimes are “naked” from paint, exposing the stones which are built with through small colored windows which are narrower in the exterior side than in the inside, emulating a fortress with arched porches, a great main wooden door and the façade looking south.

Around the “casa payesa”, a landscape filled with crop fields arranged in stone wall terraced plots so characteristic in Ibiza. You can also find traditional architectural elements in the environment, like the carriage house, flour and oil mills, barns, lime kilns, the threshing floor and the coal bunker (“sitja”).

Nowadays, the vast majority of “casas payesas” have been renewed into luxury villas highly valued and desired.

Hope you’ve enjoyed it!

 

 

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