The Real Cartuja de Valldemossa is a former Carthusian monastery built on the site of a royal palace commissioned by King Sancho of Majorca in the early fourteenth century. The monks were expelled during the liberal reforms of the 1830s, and thereafter the cells were rented to visitors — which is how Frédéric Chopin and George Sand came to spend the winter of 1838–39 here.
The visit divided them profoundly. Sand found the landscape inspiring and the villagers hostile; Chopin was ill, cold, and struggling to have his piano delivered. Yet out of that miserable winter came the 24 Preludes, Op. 28, including the famous "Raindrop" Prelude, composed as rain hammered the monastery roof. Today the complex contains several small museums: the pharmacy with its apothecary jars, the library, a fine art collection with works by Picasso, Miró, and Juli Ramis, and above all Cell 4, where the original Pleyel pianino Chopin used can be seen. The pharmacy alone — fragrant with dried herbs, its shelves lined with ceramic pots — is worth the entry price.