Sóller will attract international attention in August 2026 as travellers arrive to experience the solar eclipse.
But the island does not end when the sky becomes bright again.
The eclipse brings people to Mallorca; Sóller gives them a reason to extend their stay.
For visitors staying beyond
Mallorca Eclipse Week
,
Sóller offers another way to experience the island: through photography, painting,
live piano, performance, architecture, gastronomy and local culture.
From 19 to 23 August 2026, the historic
Capella de Ses Escolàpies will host
Gazes and Dialogues — Mirades i Diàlegs,
a cultural encounter exploring how people who live in Mallorca interpret its
human and territorial landscapes through photography, painting, audiovisual
creation, movement and music.
Photography by Pere Colom, the work of multidisciplinary artist
Sunna Wathen and live piano by
Alejandro Calafat
form part of a programme conceived as a dialogue between different ways of seeing,
remembering and inhabiting Mallorca.
Located only a few minutes from Sóller’s main square, Ses Escolàpies becomes a
meeting point for local residents, artists and international visitors during the
days immediately following the eclipse.
Staying in Mallorca after Eclipse Week?
Explore Gazes and Dialogues — Mirades i Diàlegs in Sóller.
Extend your Mallorca Eclipse Week experience
The 2026 eclipse is an exceptional reason to travel to Mallorca.
But visitors who remain on the island afterwards have the opportunity to discover
a quieter and more intimate side of Sóller.
The days following the eclipse are ideal for slowing down, exploring the valley
and moving beyond Mallorca’s most familiar tourist attractions.
Gazes and Dialogues — Mirades i Diàlegs belongs precisely to this moment.
It is not an exhibition about the eclipse itself.
Instead, it begins with a simple idea: after thousands of people have spent days
looking towards the sky, what happens when we turn our gaze back towards the
territory and the people who inhabit it?
Photography, painting and music offer different answers.
A landscape can be documented.
It can be remembered.
It can be transformed through colour.
It can be heard.
And it can look completely different depending on who is standing in front of it.
Gazes and Dialogues: seeing Sóller from inside
Sóller is photographed constantly.
Its historic tram, Modernist architecture, orange groves, mountains and nearby
Port de Sóller have become some of the most recognisable images of the valley.
But there is another way of seeing a place.
For someone who lives here, landscape is not simply scenery.
It contains memory, relationships, seasons, work and everyday routines.
A street walked hundreds of times.
A mountain seen every morning.
A face connected to a personal history.
An orange tree changing through the seasons.
Gazes and Dialogues brings these perspectives together and places
human landscapes beside territorial ones.
The idea is not to produce a definitive image of Sóller.
Quite the opposite.
There are many Sóllers because there are many ways of looking.
Pere Colom: photography, body and memory
One of the central photographic gazes in the exhibition is that of
Pere Colom.
His photographic career extends across decades of work in Mallorca and internationally,
moving between portraiture, fashion, the human body and fine-art photography.
His personal work increasingly explores memory, mythology and the relationship
between people and the Mediterranean landscape.
That relationship makes his presence especially relevant to
Gazes and Dialogues.
In Colom’s photography, a face can become a landscape.
A body can contain memory.
A photograph can preserve a person while simultaneously revealing something
about the territory that surrounds them.
Photography therefore becomes more than documentation.
It becomes a decision about where to look — and what deserves to be remembered.
Inside Ses Escolàpies, Colom’s human landscapes enter into dialogue with painting,
architecture, sound and other interpretations of Mallorca.
Sunna Wathen: a landscape lived over time
Artist Sunna Wathen approaches territory from another direction.
Her multidisciplinary practice moves between painting, sculpture, textiles,
mixed media and installation.
Her relationship with Mallorca reaches back to childhood and to the extraordinary
artistic environment that developed around Deià.
That long relationship with the island produces a different type of landscape.
It is not Mallorca discovered for the first time.
It is Mallorca accumulated through years of observation.
Colour, rock, vegetation, sea and human presence become material for interpretation
rather than simply representation.
Placed alongside photography, painting introduces another tempo into the exhibition:
the landscape is no longer captured in a fraction of a second but reconstructed
through memory, material and gesture.
Live piano at Ses Escolàpies: Alejandro Calafat
Music adds another form of gaze to Mirades i Diàlegs.
Pianist
Alejandro Calafat
brings live piano into the historic space of Ses Escolàpies as part of the cultural programme.
In the intimate acoustic environment of the chapel, piano changes the way the
artworks and architecture are experienced.
Photography fixes a moment.
Painting rebuilds one.
Music exists only while it is being played.
That contrast is particularly appropriate for an exhibition concerned with
perception, memory and the ways technology has changed our relationship with images.
The piano is therefore not simply an accompanying concert.
It introduces another way of occupying the space: through sound, time and attention.
A historic space brought back to life
The Capella de Ses Escolàpies is a distinctive historic space in central Sóller.
Its long interior, wooden galleries, twisted columns and pointed arches offer
an unusual setting for contemporary artistic work.
Photography can be encountered at different heights.
Paintings interact with historic architecture.
Piano and other sounds change the perception of distance and space.
Projection, movement, fabric and changing natural light add further layers.
During 19–23 August, the chapel therefore does not simply provide
a background for the artworks.
It becomes part of the dialogue.
Historic architecture meets contemporary images.
Residents meet visitors.
Photography meets painting.
Image meets music.
Analogue processes encounter digital ones.
And people who have lived in Mallorca for decades share a space with people
experiencing the valley for the first time.
Photography in the age of infinite images
One of the conversations underlying Gazes and Dialogues is the
transition between analogue and digital ways of seeing.
Analogue photography is associated with material, patience, uncertainty and physical memory.
Film has limits.
The photograph cannot immediately be seen.
There is a distance between taking the image and discovering it.
Digital photography changes that relationship.
Images appear instantly.
They can be reproduced almost infinitely, transformed, shared and circulated
around the world within seconds.
The question is not whether one is better than the other.
The more interesting question is:
How has technology changed the way we look at places, people and ourselves?
For a destination such as Sóller, this question has particular relevance.
The valley is no longer experienced only by those physically standing here.
Every day, representations of Mallorca circulate through phones, social networks,
travel platforms and search engines.
The landscape has become physical and digital at the same time.
Thursday 20 August: nighttime exhibition
Opening hours: 9:30 pm–11:00 pm
Thursday evening offers the opportunity to experience Ses Escolàpies at night,
when the changing light creates a different relationship between the architecture
and the images on display.
Photography and painting occupy the chapel while analogue and digital visual
languages enter into conversation.
At night, the historic space itself begins to change.
Shadows become part of the exhibition and the distinction between artwork,
architecture and atmosphere becomes less obvious.
Friday 21 August: body, movement and the street
Opening hours: 8:00 pm–11:00 pm
On Friday evening, the dialogue extends beyond the walls of the chapel.
Movement and visual intervention connect the centre of Sóller with Ses Escolàpies,
turning the route itself into part of the cultural experience.
Once inside the chapel, body, fabric, architecture and visual memory become part
of the same composition.
For visitors, the evening also offers an unusual way to move between Sóller’s
lively central square and one of its lesser-known historic interiors.
Saturday 22 August: Sóller by day and by night
Morning opening: 10:00 am–2:00 pm
Evening opening: 8:00 pm–11:00 pm
Saturday offers two different ways to experience the exhibition.
During the morning, visitors can explore the works slowly and in daylight.
Different perspectives on Mallorca appear together: images created from Sóller,
human landscapes, territorial landscapes and interpretations shaped by local
and international viewpoints.
The morning session is particularly suited to travellers exploring Sóller’s
market, historic centre, citrus culture and local shops.
Art, oranges and the Sóller Bomb
A morning in central Sóller can also become a journey through the citrus culture
that has shaped the valley for centuries.
Fresh orange juice, local products and contemporary creations inspired by Sóller
oranges connect the valley’s agricultural past with its present-day identity.
One of the most popular contemporary examples is the
Sóller Bomb
,
a modern orange speciality that has become particularly popular with international visitors.
Its success is interesting in the context of Gazes and Dialogues.
Art and gastronomy may appear to belong to different worlds, but both interpret
territory.
One uses photography, colour or sound.
The other uses an ingredient that has defined the identity and economy of the
valley for generations.
Both are contemporary expressions of Sóller.
Evening audiovisual experience
During the evening, the chapel moves towards audiovisual and digital ways of
producing and experiencing images.
The dialogue explores:
- the difference between waiting and immediacy;
- photographic material and digital screens;
- archives, memory and transformation;
- changing representations of Mallorca;
- the relationship between heritage and technology.
In the darkness of the chapel, projection can temporarily transform both the
artworks and the historic architecture surrounding them.
Sunday 23 August: piano, image and closing dialogues
Evening programme from 8:30 pm
The final evening brings the different artistic languages of
Gazes and Dialogues together.
Image, architecture, human presence and music share the same space.
Live piano adds a temporal dimension to photography and painting, encouraging
visitors to experience the exhibition not as a collection of separate objects,
but as a changing environment.
The closing evening offers a final opportunity to experience Ses Escolàpies
through another sensory perspective.
From oranges to technology: the four transformations of Sóller
The history of Sóller can be understood through four major transformations:
oranges, textiles, tourism and technology.
- Oranges connected Sóller with international markets and helped
shape its landscape, economy and identity. - Textiles introduced new forms of industry, work and urban development.
- Tourism opened the valley to travellers from across Europe and
transformed how Sóller presented itself to the outside world. - Technology now represents another turning point. Images circulate
instantly, visitors discover the valley digitally and local stories can reach
audiences around the world.
These stages are not separate chapters.
They form one continuous story of adaptation and exchange.
Gazes and Dialogues — Mirades i Diàlegs uses art to examine that
story from the present.
Sóller after the eclipse
The timing matters.
On 12 August, the eclipse temporarily transformed one of the most familiar things
in Mallorca: sunlight.
People stopped.
They looked upward.
The surrounding landscape changed as the light changed.
And then ordinary life resumed.
By 19 August, the astronomical spectacle is behind us.
The mountains remain.
The heat remains.
The streets fill and empty again.
Gazes and Dialogues redirects that heightened attention away from
the sky and towards the world immediately around us.
From celestial landscape to human landscape.
From spectacle to observation.
From an extraordinary event to the quieter act of looking.
Discover Sóller beyond the usual itinerary
Many visitors know Sóller for its historic train, Modernist
architecture, mountain scenery, orange groves and nearby Port de Sóller.
Those are essential parts of the valley, but Sóller also has a contemporary
cultural identity.
Gazes and Dialogues — Mirades i Diàlegs allows visitors to enter
a historic building, encounter artists connected to Mallorca and experience
the island through perspectives that rarely form part of a standard tourist itinerary.
It can form part of a wider stay combining:
- the
Sóller Citrus Route
; - walks through the orange valley;
- local gastronomy;
- the historic centre and market;
- the
Sóller Bomb and Sóller’s contemporary citrus culture
; - Port de Sóller;
- Deià and the Serra de Tramuntana;
- local art and architecture;
- photography, painting and live music;
- cultural activities taking place after Eclipse Week.
How to reach the Capella de Ses Escolàpies
The Capella de Ses Escolàpies is located on
Carrer del Bisbe Mateu Colom,
a short walk from Plaça de la Constitució in central Sóller.
Walking from the main square is the easiest option, particularly for the evening programme.
The route also allows visitors to pass through the historic centre and discover
streets that are often missed by those who remain only around the tram and main square.
Practical information
Gazes and Dialogues — Mirades i Diàlegs
Capella de Ses Escolàpies
Carrer del Bisbe Mateu Colom
Sóller, Mallorca
Dates: 19–23 August 2026
Thursday 20 August: 9:30 pm–11:00 pm
Friday 21 August: 8:00 pm–11:00 pm
Saturday 22 August: 10:00 am–2:00 pm and 8:00 pm–11:00 pm
Sunday 23 August: evening programme from 8:30 pm
Featuring photography, painting, audiovisual creation, performance and live music.
With work by Pere Colom and Sunna Wathen,
and live piano by
Alejandro Calafat
.
For current programme information:
Mirades i Diàlegs — Sóller programme
.
Plan your post-eclipse stay in Sóller
Mallorca Eclipse Week may be the reason many travellers arrive on the island
in August 2026.
Sóller offers a reason to stay longer.
Landscape, food, art, local history and contemporary culture are not separate
attractions here.
They are different expressions of the same valley.
Visit the exhibition.
Listen to the piano inside Ses Escolàpies.
Walk through the historic centre.
Explore the citrus landscape.
Try something made with Sóller oranges.
Spend time in the mountains or by the sea.
And perhaps look at the valley slightly differently before leaving.
Continue exploring Sóller: