Palace of the Kings of Majorca

In 1276 King James II of Majorca made Perpignan the capital of his new kingdom, the territory his father James I of Aragon had assigned him in 1262 together with the Balearic Islands, the counties of Roussillon and Cerdagne, and the lordship of Montpellier. Finding the old castle of the counts of Roussillon inadequate, James II began a new palace on a hill south of the town known as the Puig del Rei, completing it in 1309. Its architects were Ramon Pau, Pons Descoyl and Bernat Quer; Pau and Descoyl were the first foremen on the site, Descoyl the more active of the two and busy across both Perpignan and the Balearic Islands.

The fortified Gothic complex was organised around three courtyards sixty metres square. Two chapels sat one above the other, the Queen's Chapel below and Holy Cross above, its pink marble door opening into a chapel ringed by a polychrome frieze carved with Kufic Arabic script naming Allah. The Great Hall combined the seat of political power, the chapel and the royal residence, the chapel's position opposite the throne room signalling the primacy of the spiritual over the temporal; the plan drew on the palaces of Mallorca, the chapel on the earlier Sainte-Chapelle in Paris.

James III of Majorca proved a poor diplomat against his cousin Peter IV of Aragon, a far more skilled tactician. A proposed treaty between James III and the English, floated as the Hundred Years' War was taking shape, angered the French king Philip VI, on whose support Majorca had long relied. Peter IV retook Majorca on 22 June 1343 and seized Perpignan itself on 16 July 1344. James III mounted incursions into Cerdagne from the county of Foix, notably in 1347, and sold Montpellier to the French crown to finance a final attempt on the Balearic Islands. That last attempt was fatal: he was killed at the Battle of Llucmajor on 24 October 1349.

In 1415 Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor, convened a European summit at Perpignan to persuade the Avignon Antipope Benedict XIII to resign and end the Western Schism through the Council of Constance. On 20 September the Emperor met Benedict XIII at the palace together with King Ferdinand I of Aragon and delegations from the Counts of Foix, Provence, Savoy and Lorraine, an embassy from the Roman church for the Council, and envoys from the kings of France, England, Hungary, Castile and Navarre. Benedict refused to resign or to recognise the pope the Council had chosen; the Emperor, at odds with him, left Perpignan on 5 November.

Part of the palace's northern wing was destroyed in a siege in 1502. Later in the sixteenth century, after the union of the Iberian crowns, Philip II of Spain ordered a star-shaped, six-bastioned citadel built around the medieval palace to reinforce Perpignan's position on the frontier with France. Following the Treaty of the Pyrenees in 1659, France gained Roussillon and continued to develop the site's defences, and Vauban completed the citadel's fortifications in 1680. With the frontier now further off, the ramparts were given over to gardens and the old palace, known as the donjon de la citadelle, housed the garrison's staff headquarters.

A handful of persistent scholars secured the palace's listing on the historic monuments register in 1875. A movement in favour of its restoration took shape, while the demolition of the town's own ramparts spared the citadel. In 1913 the palace and its 1577 gate were classified as historic monuments, and the citadel around it was listed in its own right in 1935. Restoration began during the Second World War, while the palace still served as a warehouse and the citadel as a prison. The General Council of the Pyrénées-Orientales bought the palace and gardens in 1958 from the Ministry of Defence, which kept the Vauban bastions and 19th-century buildings as a garrison; the council has restored and preserved the site as a historic monument since, and hosts Guitares au Palais, a free three-day guitar festival, in the palace and its gardens.