Casa Robert Graves is a fascinating tribute to the British writer and poet who moved to Deià in 1929 and had his house built here three years later. It's a well-presented and rewarding insight into his life and work; on show you'll find period furnishings, a detailed film on his life, love life and writings, and sundry books, pictures and everyday objects that belonged to Graves himself.
A prologue to the three-storey stone house, Ca N’Alluny (House in the Distance) is a thorough biographic film shown in a building near the entrance. Graves left hurriedly in 1936 at the outbreak of civil war, entrusting the house to the care of a local. When Spanish authorities allowed him to return 10 years later, he found everything as he had left it. And even now, the whole place is set up as if Graves had just stepped out for a stroll. His voice rings out through the rooms as his reading of his poem The Face in the Mirror is played in a loop of seemingly eternal playback; the effect is curiously powerful. Each room – whether it's the entrada, the kitchen, the printing room, Graves' study (cool in summer and nippy in winter) or the studies of Laura Riding and Beryl Graves – has a plastic-laminated introduction in English. On the 1st floor, several rooms have been converted into a museum, where his works are displayed alongside other ephemera from his life.
Famous for such works as I, Claudius, Goodbye to all That and The White Goddess, Robert Graves also wrote reams of verse and a book on his adopted homeland, Mallorca Observed (1965), and the prologue to his The Golden Fleece is set in Deià. A handful of his 146 works is available for sale at the ticket office, and ask there also for the 'Reading Suggestions' information sheet.
