La Torre del Canonigo

There are people who have been to Ibiza many times and never set foot in the Unesco World Heritage-listed Dalt Vila. In high summer, the thought of hiking up that old drawbridge and meandering through cobblestone lanes, the sun beaming down on you, is enough to push the sweat glands into overdrive; parking up there (especially in recent years) is, at best, highly irritating and at worst, an expensive nightmare; and, well, it can be hard to ignore the call of the beach. Mr Smith and I fancy ourselves Ibiza regulars, and even we’re guilty of all the above.

But La Torre del Canonigo, a centuries-old hotel comprising 26 rooms dotted across three historic buildings — La Torre, El Corsario and Casa Puget, the latter a former Jesuit convent—makes those annoyances disappear. Looking up from Ibiza Town below, it’s nearly at the top of the hill, just to the right of the brightly coloured buildings and clock tower at the edge, perched stylishly among a few towering palms. 

It’s the ideal base for an Ibiza holiday with a cultural tone, rather than a lazier, more hedonistic one. As soon as we book, we're emailed a WhatsApp number. We're advised to message it once we’ve made our way to the meeting point on the Vara de Rey promenade in town; we do, and not two minutes later, a Fiat 500 rocks up. It careens up roads I’d sworn were footpaths ('Glad I’m not driving,' says Mr Smith, to which I reply, 'Me too'), delivering us to the hotel with the speed and efficiency of a five-star Deliveroo rider. 

Then there’s the suite we check into, which is in the 10th-century artillery tower La Torre, accessible through the hotel garden and pool area, on a different street just above the other buildings. An icy bottle of cava awaits us, which we pop and bring out to the terrace. Here, a bath tub and raised lounge area are accompanied by views stretching past Talamanca on the other side of the port (we feel triumphant when we spy Fish Shack, our favourite summer pop-up). On an island where great views have resulted in road closures or can come with hefty minimum spends, we’ve hit the proverbial jackpot.

Another luxury: having the old town on our literal doorstep. Never heard of Casa Broner? Didn’t know Ibiza had not one, but two art museums (the Museu d’Art Contemporani d’Eivissa and the Museu Puget)? Read about the fabled convent where nuns sell baked goods for a few hours each day, but wrote it off as fiction? I’m pleased to announce that they are all, indeed, facts — and all worth a visit, which is a cinch to do from La Torre del Canonigo. It’s so easy, in fact, that we manage them all in a single morning and afternoon, with enough time to retire back to our suite for a siesta.

As the sun starts to think about setting for the day, we head to S’Escalinata for a drink, settling in on bean bags on the stairs for some pre-dinner people-watching. Then, because neither Mr Smith nor I are great at planning things in advance, we decide to try our luck for a table at Taller Sa Penya, catching a ride down in one of the hotel’s cars before walking through the labyrinthine, colourful streets of Sa Penya, the storied fisherman’s quarter of the old marina. Thanks to a no-show, we manage to snag a table and happily dine on Ibizan prawn foam and the like (molecular gastronomy and experiential dining are the speciality of chef Boris Buono, who worked at Noma in Copenhagen when there were just eight people in the kitchen). 

We down a bottle of orange wine, chatting to the woman at the next table before the conversation starts to turn slightly surreal and ends in her propositioning us to take a taxi with her to San Juan, in the north of the island. Unsure if she’s angling for a threesome or a way to split her cab fare home, and not keen on either prospect, we make our apologies, stumble out of the restaurant, send a WhatsApp to the hotel, and within minutes, are back within the safety of one of its Fiats. Comparing notes on our restaurant friend, Mr Smith and I agree she was probably after some hanky-panky. I pop ‘Threesome Lady’ in as her surname in my phone (which she’d grabbed from me to enter her number) and, flattered but slightly alarmed, feel very safe indeed once we’re back among the plush lounges and old-money decor of our suite. 

Breakfast the next morning is the first time we see any of the other hotel guests, some of whom giggle as Mr Smith regales them with our escapades — or lack thereof — the night before. We debate whether to send Threesome Lady a courtesy text 'so she doesn’t feel bad about being rejected', suggests one guest, or 'to thank her for last night and to stay in touch', winks another. We all laugh over eggs, coffee and flaky croissants, each of us comforted, as we were previously, by being here in the lap of luxury that is La Torre del Canonigo.