TORRE D'EN GALMÉS
(Taulas)
Taula of Torre d'en Galmés

LOCATION:

Situation

It is at the foot of the central talayot, in the high part of the village, to which you arrive by a well signalled deviation that there is on the left in the highway Alaior-Son Bou, at half distance between these two points.



MUNICIPAL DISTRICT:

Alaior.


DESCRIPTION:

Its precinct is quite well preserved, although in the last times we have seen the oriental wall beginning to fall. The "taula", on the other hand, has the stone-support broken and the stone-capital, that had a rabbet to be inserted in the pilaster, was used in the Roman time for sarcophagus, reason why the rabbet is deeper than which is the habitual.

The building (the precinct) that surrounds the monument has a plan in horseshoe form and concave facade, and you accede to it from this one by means of some steps that lead to a door with two monolithic pillars for jambs, pillars that, according to old news, supported a lintel. The interior is divided in two areas, that of entrance, with the" taula", and the apse, being the structure of the internal adornment the one that marks the difference, because in the first case it is of flagstones placed on edge and pillars with plane capitals of a certain size, while in the apse it is formed by monolithic pilasters, on a baseboard, and a wall of small stones.


DIMENSIONS:

Stone-support:

Stone-capital:


CHRONOLOGY:

Talayotic III (800-450 B.C.), since it seems to be that a brass figure that represents the Egyptian god Imhotep and that was found in the precinct must be dated in the 7th century B.C., although it is possible that it arrived at the island a certain time after it was fused.


NEIGHBOURING MONUMENTS:

The village is organized around three "talayots" arranged from the east to the west on the top of a small hill that dominates the contour. At the foot of the central talayot, the biggest, there is the precinct of the "taula", with its facade looking toward the south. In the lower part, also to the south, it seems that it is where there are the biggest number of constructions, among which highlight several "columned rooms", some circular houses and a complex "system for water collection" that used again an old Pretalayotic "hypogeum". Some portals, of different lines of walls (each one of them, probably, of a different stage from the growth of the town), some dispersed hypogeums and some houses, recently dug and located in the north side, complete the remains of this that was probably the biggest Talayotic nucleus of population in the island.

Nearly, there are also the "megalithic sepulchre" of "Ses Roques Llises" and the ensemble of "Sa Comerma de Sa Garita".


© Ferran Lagarda i Mata, 1996-2012 (text and pictures). All rights reserved.