Sant Antoni de Portmany is best known today for its Sunset Strip, but the town beneath that reputation has two thousand years of history behind it, from a Roman harbour to a fortified medieval church, and a laid-back promenade that’s easy to enjoy without ever going near a club.
A little history
The town takes its Catalan name, Portmany, from the Roman name for its harbour, Portus Magnus, and it stayed a working fishing village for most of the two thousand years since. Its parish church, the Parroquia de Sant Antoni Abat, dates to 1305, making it the second oldest church on the island; its thick white walls and a quadrangular defence tower built right alongside it point to a time when the harbour needed defending as much as the congregation needed a place to pray. Sant Antoni’s modern transformation began in the late 1950s, when Spain’s mass tourism boom brought the first hotels to the bay, and picked up further in the early 1990s with the building of the Passeig de ses Fonts, the fountain-lined promenade that still runs along the water today. Right in the middle of that change, in 1980, Café del Mar opened on the rocks at the harbour’s edge, and in 1994 resident DJ José Padilla released the compilation Café del Mar Volumen Uno, which more or less invented chillout music and gave the whole stretch of bars along the bay its name: the Sunset Strip.
Getting there and parking
Sant Antoni is about 20 minutes from Ibiza Town on the island’s west coast. Parking in the old town and around the harbour fills up fast in summer; a short walk in from the edge of town is often quicker than circling for a spot near the water.
The old town and harbour
The fortified parish church sits just back from the water, still a working place of worship, so time a visit around any services. From there it’s a short walk down to the Passeig de ses Fonts, where fountains, palm trees and harbourside cafes make for an easy stroll before the town gets loud after dark.
The Sunset Strip
Café del Mar and its neighbours line the rocks west of the harbour, and you don’t need to be heading to a club to enjoy them: turn up an hour or so before sunset, find a seat facing the water, and watch the evening’s unofficial main event along with everyone else. It gets busy and considerably louder once the sun is down, so this is best treated as a sunset stop rather than a full night out.