We visited S´Hostal yesterday which is a fascinating sandstone quarry located 1km from the centre of Ciutadella on the east side of the island of Menorca. Quarrying began over two hundred years ago here on the island and the amazing landscape that has been left behind from all the years of quarrying and the way the blocks were extracted leave a maze-like wonderland of sculptural and architectural forms
Each new block of sandstone would be crudely shaped and hacked out by hand on two sides using a thin flat bladed stone pick and then separated from the bedrock below with feather and wedges. Work in this quarry ended in 1994.
This quarry has been restored and rehabilitated and transformed into a series of secret gardens and lush cloistered spaces
There are a lot of strange artistic shapes everywhere you explore. It is evident however that the men quarrying here never thought about the bazaar topography they were leaving behind.
Fredrika, a local waller, points out another large textured area that shows where the early quarry men chopped lower and lower into the rock to extract the valuable building blocks.
There are man made landscapes to be discovered at every level and on so many different scales.
