Almost every plot on the island contains a traditional family home called a casament (or ses cases in plural), in allusion to the different attachments added onto the original dwelling according to the family’s needs. 

Most typically Ibizan houses have the same cubic volumes, a porxet (a rustic porch that provides welcome shade in summertime), a squat, triangular chimney, an oven and a well – all luminously whitewashed – and a vegetable garden called es tancó, where vegetables, herbs and palm trees grow. 

The ancient, almost horizontal roofs, assembled with layers of dry alga, chunks of coal and impermeable clay laid over pine or sabine wood beams, have the minimum possible slope so that precious rainwater could be collected in cisterns and not wasted.

Eexcess sunlight diffuses into shadows inside the houses’ thick walls with their small windows. The most magnificent example of this popular architecture is possibly Sant Llorenç de Balàfia (its towers are open for visits), the old village of Santa Eulària d’es Riu or the basic, rustic single-family aspect of houses such as Sa Talaia in Sant Josep and Can Vicent Prats on the outskirts of Sant Antoni.

Architecture with a capital ‘A’, copied by the great masters, admired by Le Corbussier, Sert, Elías Torres and others, and exported thanks to its functional aesthetic and elegant sobriety and especially its skilful adaptation to Ibiza’s climate with its warm summers, sparse rainfall in spring and warm, humid winters.