Mahón

The town's name is usually traced to the Carthaginian general Mago Barca, Hannibal's brother, who is thought to have sheltered in the harbour in 205 BC. Mago became a Roman town, then passed to the Eastern Roman Empire; it suffered raids until the Caliphate of Córdoba took it in 903. Alfonso III of Aragon captured it in 1287, and the harbour, one of the most strategically important in the western Mediterranean, was refortified. It was not enough: in 1535 an Ottoman fleet under Hayreddin Barbarossa sacked the town and carried 600 captives off to Algiers.

The harbour shaped the next century of the town's history. A British and Dutch force took Menorca in 1708, the Treaty of Utrecht confirmed British possession in 1713, and the British moved the island's capital from Ciutadella to Mahón and built a naval dockyard on the north shore and a hospital on Illa del Rei. The island changed hands repeatedly — to France after the siege of Fort St Philip in 1756, back to Britain in 1763, to a Franco-Spanish force in 1782, to Britain again in 1798 — before passing finally to Spain in 1802. British rule left its mark on the island, whose architecture mixes colonial and local styles.

In the Spanish Civil War Menorca stayed loyal to the Republic until 1939, and Mahón was bombed by Nationalist aircraft supported by Fascist Italy. In the late 20th century income from tourism paid for the restoration of the historic centre.

The biggest event in the town's year is the Festes de Gràcia in early September, in honour of the Virgin of Gràcia. On two days well over a hundred riders on Menorcan horses enter the square in front of the town hall four at a time, and the crowd makes the horses rear up — the jaleo — before the night turns into a street dance. The horses, the caixers, the fabioler and the giants are the festival's main figures.

Music has a long history here. The Teatre Principal, opened in 1829, is one of the oldest opera houses in Spain and hosts an opera week each year with singers of the bel canto repertoire, the town also holds an international organ festival, and Santa Maria's great organ was completed in 1810. The island's British century left traces in speech as well as stone: Menorquí, the local Catalan, still uses a few English loanwords such as 'grevi' for gravy and 'xoc' for chalk.

Among the people connected with the town are the toxicologist Mathieu Orfila, the linguist Francesc de Borja Moll and the historian Juan Ramis. Sport is local in scale; in basketball, CB Menorca, who play at the Pavelló Menorca, won promotion to Spain's second division in 2023.

About 30,700 people lived in the municipality in 2025, out of roughly 102,000 on the whole island. As the capital, Mahón is the seat of the Island Council of Menorca and holds the Hospital Mateu Orfila, the airport, a power station and the commercial port, so much of its working life is administrative and practical rather than built around resorts. Dairy farming, which gives the island its cheese, remains important in the surrounding countryside, and the harbour is still home to a Spanish naval station on the site of the old British dockyard.

The town has no beach of its own — its waterfront is a working and leisure harbour — and in summer residents and visitors head out to the coves and sandy beaches elsewhere on the island. In season the quays fill with diners and cruise passengers, while winter returns the town to a quieter local rhythm of school runs, shopping in the centre and evening walks.

Mahón gives its name to two famous products. Mayonnaise is commonly said to have originated here and to take its name from the town, though the many stories linking it to the French capture of Mahón in 1756 are contradictory, and the sauce is used constantly in island cooking, with or without garlic. Mahón cheese is a cows'-milk cheese, its rind usually orange from being rubbed with butter or oil and paprika; its designation of origin dates from 1985, and since 1997 the protected name has been Mahón-Menorca.

The best-known Menorcan dish is caldereta de llagosta, lobster stew, once a poor fishermen's meal when lobsters were easy to find; the lobster is cooked with onion, tomato, garlic and parsley. Oliaigua is a thin, simple soup, sometimes eaten with figs, and Menorcan sobrassada, the cured pork sausage of the Balearics, is thinner and less spicy than Mallorca's. Sweets include amargos, almond biscuits made with egg whites.

Gin arrived with the British in the 18th century, and the Xoriguer distillery still makes it on the harbourside. Pomada mixes gin with lemon juice, and pellofa is gin with a twist of lemon peel and a splash of soda. Menorca also makes its own wine.