Mallorca, Spain

Can Simoneta

Price per night from$395.21

Price information

If you haven’t entered any dates, the rate shown is provided directly by the hotel and represents the cheapest double room (including tax) available in the next 60 days.

Prices have been converted from the hotel’s local currency (EUR363.64), via openexchangerates.org, using today’s exchange rate.

Style

21st-century farmhouse

Setting

Verdant clifftop

This secluded Mallorca hotel sits on a clifftop near Capdepera. Its restaurant and rooms are set in historic buildings. Can Simoneta also has private access to the sea and is near to peaceful Mallorca beaches and golf courses.

Smith Extra

Get this when you book through us:

A bottle of Mallorquín wine and a basket of fruit, plus local jam and liqueurs on departure

Facilities

Photos Can Simoneta facilities

Need to know

Rooms

26, including 11 suites.

Check–Out

Noon, but flexible, subject to availability. Earliest check in, 3pm.

Prices

Double rooms from £342.06 (€400), including tax at 10 per cent. Please note the hotel charges an additional room tax of €4.00 per person per night on check-out.

More details

Rates include breakfast.

Hotel closed

The hotel closes for the winter from early November to late February (exact dates vary annually).

At the hotel

Restaurant, massage area, internet access. Direct access to the sea and a sandy beach via a curved stairway carved into the cliff.

Our favourite rooms

Most importantly, ask for a sea view. Otherwise, our favourite rooms are 4, 7, 21 and 22.

Poolside

There are two swimming pools – one heated and one unheated – and a clifftop Jacuzzi.

Also

The hotel has private access to a secluded cove where there is a bathing pool cut out of the rock. Hotel guests get 10 per cent discount at three local golf courses.

Children

Under-18s are not allowed.

Food and Drink

Photos Can Simoneta food and drink

Top Table

Both indoors and outside, the corner tables are best. The hotel can arrange a secluded dinner for two perched on the cliff.

Dress Code

Relaxed, but dress for dinner.

Hotel restaurant

The restaurant has views over the bay of Canyamel, and specialises in Mediterranean dishes with a twist. If the weather is good, get a table outside on the terrace.

Hotel bar

Snuggle up with drinks under the awning on the sofas, or struggle down the steps to the monk’s pool with your drinks.

Last orders

Food: 10.30pm. You can order drinks until you go to bed.

Room service

24 hours, but limited after hours.

Location

Photos Can Simoneta location
Address
Can Simoneta
Carretera Artà-Canyamel Km 8, Finca Torre Canyamel
Mallorca
07580
Spain

Planes

Palma de Mallorca airport (also known as Son Sant Joan), which is 40 miles away – or an hour's drive.

Automobiles

It’ll be worth having a car to reach this secluded clifftop hotel, and for exploring the Mallorcan countryside and coastline. The hotel has free parking and bicycle hire. The nearest bus station is 800m away.

Other

Take the ferry from Port de Sóller to visit Sa Calobra, one of Mallorca’s most spectacular natural attractions.

Worth getting out of bed for

If you're staying nearby – and most guests do, because there's not a great deal to do beyond Can Simoneta – make the most of the golf (there are four courses in the area); Smith members get 10 per cent off at three of them. Watersports include waterskiing, fishing, kite boarding, wake boarding and wind surfing. Hiking or mountain biking are popular, especially outside high season. There is a tennis club nearby, and also stables. Canyamel beach is a short walk across the finca’s land and across the rocks. Not too far is the legendary Cala Torta beach, which is unspoilt though the chiringuito there is expensive simply because it’s so well known. Cala Agulla beach is not far away by car and is relatively untouched. Stop by sister stays Font Santa Hotel or Hotel Pleta de Mar for pampering sessions in their soulful spas. Visit in January for the festival of San Sebastián, the patron saint of Palma. Revellers also doff their party caps to San Antonio Abad during this month. Since he's the patron saint of animals, you can expect all manner of pet processions and animal-blessing ceremonies. If you're in the mood for carnival, this part of the world gets busy with fancy dress and brightly coloured floats during the weekend before Lent for Sa RuaSemana Santa, aka Holy Week, is an even bigger do: Palma holds processions every day, and the smaller towns have festivities, too. In July, those after a knees-up should find their way to Valldemossa, when it's time to honour Santa Catalina Tomàs, the patron saint of Mallorca.

Local restaurants

If you do fancy making the effort to venture further afield, Ses Rotges on Cala Ratjada is Michelin-starred, with a dining area out in the garden during summer. Renaissance in Capdepera (+34 971 563 713) is a romantic restaurant serving great French cuisine. Enjoy fresh fish at Can Maya in Cala Ratjada; make sure you get a table on the terrace looking over the small harbour. The best beach restaurants, or chiringuito, for lunch is at Cala Torta, but the ones in Canyamel is also great. Restaurante Porxada de Sa Torre, located beneath an old defence tower of the 13th century is very rustically decorated with ancient farmer tools as well as an antique oil and wine press. Order their speciality; lechona (roast suckling pig) and roasted chicken. Book a table at sister hotel Convent de la Missió's Michelin-starred Marc Fosh restaurant, or head to Es Moli Den Bou on Calle Sol in Sant Llorenç for Michelin-starred option for Mallorquin cuisine.

Reviews

Photos Can Simoneta reviews
Alison Chow

Anonymous review

By Alison Chow, Boutique buyer

We found out before we set off for Spain that our clifftop hotel, Can Simoneta, was originally built well over a century ago, as a house for a monk whose doctor had prescribed a course of seawater treatments for some unspecified medical condition. We realised a couple of things immediately: 19th-century monks would not be impressed by the NHS, and our weekend in Mallorca was going to be a profoundly peaceful affair. After all, a poorly monk is likely to live in a nice tranquil spot, rather than heading for the noisy, bustling charms of somewhere like Magaluf.

We were right, about the second thing anyway. This was one brother who knew how to choose his location. Just an hour’s drive from Palma airport, we find ourselves standing on the edge of a cliff, gazing and sighing at the spectacular views over the Mediterranean towards the island’s smaller sister, Menorca. It is the perfect place, if you’re so inclined, to contemplate the wonders of God’s creation – or, in my case, to get up to some thoroughly un-monkish frolics with my own Mr Smith.

That monk must have had a pretty good time here, too. The house is way up on the cliff, and a staircase was cut out of the rock so that he could saunter down and take the waters in an amazing, secluded bath – like a natural Jacuzzi – carved straight out of the rocks on the beach at the foot of the stairs.

The hotel itself consists of two imposing stone houses that were lovingly restored and refurbished in 2004. One of the houses is much closer to the clifftop than the other, and this is the one to ask for. Its suites are exceptional, with muslin-draped four-poster beds, large windows to let in the summer breeze and, of course, those views over the sea. There is great variety of rooms in the second building, including one which is smaller and darker, with a very small window (presumably as a defence against the heat). Ask for either a terrace or a high room with big windows if you’re in this house.

All the rooms have satellite TV and an Internet connection, although we wouldn’t have minded if they didn’t. Of course there are those who want to check emails or watch the news, but in a place as calm and secluded as Can Simoneta, modern communications can feel like an unnecessary addition. That said, our bathroom, always a good indicator of the quality of a hotel, is thoroughly modern and immaculate. And if we needed any help getting to sleep, the sound of running water from the fountain outside our window would prove more effective than Temazepam.

Not that we spend much time inside, anyway. In the morning, we prescribe some seawater therapy for ourselves, on a very nice beach a short walk away. Unusually for the Mediterranean in high season, and Mallorca in particular, the pale sands are blissfully uncrowded. Back at the hotel, we spend the afternoon beside the pool, lounging on the rattan chairs all decked with the whitest of white linen cushions, seeking refuge from the sun and drinking in the view (as well as a few cocktails).

The hardest decisions we have to face during our stay are whether to have a massage in the hotel or under the pine trees overlooking the sea, whether to clamber into the Jacuzzi at the top of the cliff or walk down the stairs to the ‘monk’s pool’ at the bottom, and whether to take advantage of the yoga classes or simply lounge about in one of the hammocks hanging in the hotel’s extensive and beautiful gardens.

There are plenty of other activities to do in the surrounding area, should we wish to venture away from our clifftop haven: farms and caves to explore, the mediaeval tower at Canyamel that looks so beautiful in the distance, churches and prehistoric settlements. After less than 24 hours in the hotel, though, we are so relaxed that just imagining doing these things seems far too strenuous. Of course, we end up doing nothing, and it’s absolutely lovely.

We do devote a little bit of mental energy to wondering why more of the hotel facilities are not closer to the edge of the cliff, rather than 50 metres inland. It seems odd. Are they worried about erosion? Did the sickly monk also suffer from vertigo? No – the answer lies in the hotel’s location on the margins of a nature reserve. Can Simoneta has a very special position on the coastline, and apparently it’s a miracle they even got planning permission for the pool.

Though it is the location that sets it apart from similar boutique hideaways, the interior of the hotel is superb, too: elegant and simple. The staff are all extremely professional and discreet, and the peaceful restaurant serves delicious, refined Mediterranean food (it has to be excellent, we decide, to match the view from the terrace). For anyone looking to escape the natter and nonsense of the everyday and unwind in a spectacular, peaceful and soul-soothing environment, Can Simoneta is a very fine retreat indeed. In fact, you could say it’s just what the monk’s doctor ordered.

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Price per night from $395.21