Villas in Ibiza Island Interior

The interior of Ibiza is the island as it looked before tourism: red earth, carob and fig trees, dry-stone walls and white fincas in the cubic forms that architects have admired since the 1930s. Santa Gertrudis de Fruitera is the village at the centre, with its church square, galleries, restaurants and Bar Costa, where hams hang from the ceiling. Around it lie Sant Rafel with its potteries, Sant Llorenç with the fortified hamlet of Balàfia and the valleys towards Sant Mateu and Santa Agnès, where the almond trees blossom in February.

Here stand the fincas one associates with Ibiza: farmhouses several centuries old, with thick walls, beams of sabina wood and an inner courtyard, converted into villas with a pool in the garden, a chill-out terrace and a long view across the fields to the hills. Plots are large, the nearest neighbour often out of sight, and every coast of the island is ten to twenty minutes away, which is why many returning guests prefer precisely this position.

The airport is 20 to 25 minutes away, Ibiza Town the same, San Antonio a quarter of an hour. Evenings mean dinner in Santa Gertrudis, sunset at Benirrás or on the west coast, and on Saturdays the Las Dalias market at Sant Carles. Florian Settele lived in Ibiza for five years and knows these fincas in person; he knows which drive runs over gravel, where the wind blows in August and which house suits children well.