Ibiza: history and heritage

About Ibiza: history and heritage

By the ULTIMATE Ibiza Editorial Team

Editor-in-Chief: Jai Michael

Ibiza is far older than its fame. Phoenicians founded its port; Carthage made it one of its great harbours, and buried its dead in thousands of tombs on the hill of Puig des Molins; the Moors farmed its valleys; and the Spanish crown wrapped its old town in Renaissance walls. UNESCO lists all of it, together with the seagrass meadows offshore.

At a glance

Population: 161,485 on the island (INE, 1 January 2024).

Names through history: Ibossim (Phoenician), Ebusus (Roman), Yabisa (Arabic), Eivissa (Catalan), Ibiza.

Phoenicians, Carthaginians, Romans and Moors came to Ibiza long before the world did.

Languages: Catalan, in its Eivissenc form, and Spanish.

UNESCO World Heritage: Ibiza, Biodiversity and Culture (1999): Dalt Vila, the Phoenician settlement of Sa Caleta, the necropolis of Puig des Molins and the posidonia seagrass meadows.

The Phoenician port

Phoenicians settled at Sa Caleta, on the south coast, in the eighth century BC, then founded the town on the bay of Ibiza by tradition in 654 BC. They called it Ibossim, perhaps after the god Bes.

Carthage and Rome

Under Carthage the town flourished, minting coins and exporting salt, wine and dye. Puig des Molins, with some three thousand tombs, is one of the best-preserved Punic necropolises in the Mediterranean, and its museum displays the figurines found there. Rome took the island, Ebusus, in the second century BC.

Yabisa

From 902 the island was part of the Islamic world, as Yabisa. The Moors brought irrigation and the terraced farms of the valleys, and many place names begin with Beni-.

The Renaissance walls

Catalan forces took the island in 1235. In the sixteenth century, against Ottoman and Barbary raids, the crown commissioned the Italian engineer Giovanni Battista Calvi to build new walls around Dalt Vila, one of the best-preserved Renaissance fortifications in the Mediterranean. Fortified churches and watchtowers across the island date from the same fear of pirates.

From hippies to clubs

In the 1960s artists and hippies came for the light and the low cost of living; the clubs followed from the 1970s, and today Ibiza is famous worldwide for its music. The island’s farmers, salt workers and fishermen still keep its older traditions alive, from the Ses Salines salt pans to the ball pagès folk dance.

Our advice: climb Dalt Vila in the early morning, walk the walls to the cathedral, then visit Puig des Molins below. Go to Ses Salines at sunset, when the salt pans turn pink.

Sources

Population: Instituto Nacional de Estadística (INE), population at 1 January 2024. History: UNESCO World Heritage Centre (Ibiza, Biodiversity and Culture); Museu Arqueològic d’Eivissa i Formentera; Consell d’Eivissa.

Opening hours, prices and seasonal openings change, so please check with Ibiza: history and heritage before you go.