Ibiza

The reputation occupies a small part of the map and a narrow part of the year. Most of this island is agricultural — dry-stone terraces, fig trees, whitewashed farmhouses, roads that lose their markings and end at a cove with parking for very few cars — while the industry that made the name famous runs on a handful of sites for roughly five months. Book one version and you can spend a fortnight barely touching the other.

The island under the reputation

The interior has been farmed for centuries and looks it. Villages grew around fortified churches because the coast was raided for generations, and those thick white walls are still the centre of most of them. North of the main road the land rises into pine and holm oak, with weekly markets that date from the island's counterculture years and have outlived several attempts to tidy them up.

At the southern end the salt pans are still worked, as they have been since antiquity, and the ground around them is a natural park. Offshore, protected seagrass meadows are the reason the water reads the colour it does in photographs — that clarity is an ecosystem rather than a filter.

Ibiza Town itself is two places stacked. The harbour and its lanes are at sea level; above them the upper town sits inside Renaissance walls, steep, quiet after the day-trippers leave, and a World Heritage site for the fortifications and the Phoenician remains alike.

When to come

June and September are the two months that give the island without the queue for it. The sea has warmed by June and the season is properly open; September holds the same water with fewer people in it and the closing weeks of the club calendar for anyone who came for those. July and August are the peak in every sense — coast roads slow, coves full by the middle of the morning, and rates to match. May and October are calm and lovely with a share of places shut, which is a fair trade if the beach club is not the point.

Couples generally do better at either edge of the season than in its middle, and better in the interior or the north than on the western strip.

Is it expensive?

It can be an eye-watering week or an ordinary Spanish holiday, and the difference is which island you book rather than how much you spend on flights. Sunbed minimums at the beach clubs, a table at a venue with a name, a villa in August and a day boat are where money disappears. What brings the bill down is the interior, a hire car, a kitchen, the shoulder months, and the many coves that have nothing on them but a shack selling fish.

Eating is priced like Spain once you are away from the seafront terraces, and the markets are genuinely good.

What is worth paying for

A day on the water, because the coastline reads differently from the sea and several of the better coves are far easier to reach that way. A hire car, which is not really optional unless you intend to stay within walking distance of one bay. And in the peak weeks, a room with air conditioning and some distance from a main road.

Where to stay

Splurge

A restored farmhouse in the interior with a pool and a view of nothing but terraces, or a design hotel on the western cliffs where the sunset arrives in the room. Both suit travellers who want the island quiet and are content to drive to dinner.

Mid-range

A small hotel in Ibiza Town or in Santa Eulalia, walkable to the water and to a proper restaurant street, with a pool on the roof rather than in the grounds. This is the tier that keeps a car optional and the evening within reach.

Good value

An apartment in Santa Eulalia or one of the northern villages, where rates ease markedly and a supermarket and a bakery are part of the arrangement. You trade the postcard address for space, and the drive to the coves becomes part of the day.

The island at a glance

Rates and availability here swing harder between the peak and the shoulders than on most of the mainland, so comparing current stay and experience options across your exact dates is worth doing before anything else is booked.