Valencia

Valencia: Science, Sea & Tradition

Valencia is Spain's third-largest city and one of its most pleasant for walking and cycling. Its old town holds a Gothic cathedral, the Silk Exchange and a modernist market, while the former Turia riverbed became a huge garden that ends at the City of Arts and Sciences, the futuristic complex that is now its best-known postcard. Just minutes away, the sea and the Albufera lagoon round out a destination with a mild climate most of the year.

💡 Fun Facts & History

• 💡The City of Arts and Sciences, largely designed by Valencian architect Santiago Calatrava, opened in phases from the late 1990s and includes an opera house, a science museum, a planetarium and an oceanographic park.
• 💡After the great flood of 1957, the Turia river was diverted and its old bed was turned into the Turia Gardens, a park several kilometers long that runs through the city and is now explored on foot or by bike.
• 💡Paella was born in the Valencian Community, around the Albufera lagoon. The traditional recipe uses chicken, rabbit and vegetables cooked over a wood fire; seafood versions came later.
• 💡Las Fallas, every March, fill the city with cardboard-and-wood monuments that are burned on the night of March 19. The festival is recognized by UNESCO as Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.
• 💡La Lonja de la Seda, a 15th-century civil Gothic building where silk was traded, is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and one of Europe's finest examples of merchant Gothic.
• 💡Spanish and Valencian, the region's co-official language, are both spoken in Valencia. You will see signs and menus in both, and Spanish will be enough on the street.