Valencia Travel Guide

The City of Arts and Sciences is a world-famous, spectacularly avant-garde modern complex in Valencia—a science and culture complex of grand white buildings shaped like futuristic space scenes; it is Valencia's well-deserved number-one landmark and city card, and an outstanding example of modern architecture. The City of Arts and Sciences (Spanish: Ciudad de las Artes y las Ciencias) was designed and built by the famous local architect Santiago Calatrava and others, at the end of the dry riverbed left after the Turia River was diverted (now the Turia Garden). The complex is world-famous for its avant-garde, stunning, futuristic and sculptural forms—several uniquely shaped, grand pure-white buildings with fluid lines and strange forms (like giant eyes, bones, shells, sails or future space creatures), set off by surrounding blue pools, creating an awe-inspiring scene like a sci-fi future world—a place countless architecture and photography lovers dream of. Beyond its stunning exterior, the complex is a rich science-and-culture hub with venues of varied functions: the majestic Science Museum (an interactive modern science museum, educational and fun), the hemispherical planetarium and IMAX cinema (like a giant eye), the grand opera house and Palace of the Arts (shaped like a giant helmet or sail), and one of Europe's largest aquariums—the Oceanogràfic (showing rich marine life from the world's oceans)—truly integrating science, art, entertainment and education, especially suited to families and all visitors. Visiting Valencia's City of Arts and Sciences, marvelling at its stunning, futuristic architecture and exploring its rich science and culture venues, is a stunning and rich Valencia experience.

Valencia Cathedral blends Romanesque, Gothic and Baroque, and is said to hold the Holy Chalice — reputedly the cup of the Last Supper. Its bell tower, the Miguelete, is famed for 327 spiral ramps; from the top you circle above the old town and the Turia gardens. Three styles in one body make it a 3D reader of Valencia's layered history.

Mercado Central stands at the edge of Valencia's old town — opened in 1928, among Europe's largest fresh-food markets and a modernist jewel. Beneath stained glass and a steel-and-glass dome, hundreds of stalls line the aisles: mountains of Valencian oranges, whole Iberico hams carved to order, red prawns, octopus and olives in perfect ranks, amid a hum of voices and aromas. This is no tourist set — it is where locals shop daily. Mornings buzz as vendors call out the day's catch and produce. Finish with the local ritual at the entrance: horchata with a farton sweet bread.

The Mercado de Colon is a jewel of Valencian modernismo. Opened in 1916, its iron frame, colourful ceramics and stained glass once housed the city's liveliest food market. Today the soaring hall has been reinvented as a lifestyle and dining destination, where cafes, flower stalls and stylish restaurants occupy the old market stalls, locals linger over coffee and visitors snap photos under the glass canopy. Entry is free, and even without buying anything the architecture alone rewards a slow lap. Step outside and you are directly on Calle Colon, the city's main shopping street.

The Silk Exchange is Valencia's commercial monument of the Golden Age — a late-15th-century Gothic masterpiece and a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1986. Its 'Consulado' hall, with spiral columns like a stone forest, was the hub of commercial arbitration and silk trade, witnessing Valencia's wealth and ambition as a Mediterranean power.

The Turia Gardens are Valencia's most distinctive urban feature. After the great flood of 1957, the old riverbed was transformed into a ribbon park running roughly nine kilometres from the edge of the old town down to the City of Arts and Sciences. Orange-tree paths, playgrounds, football pitches and running tracks fill the former river channel, where locals jog, cycle and picnic every day. Follow the garden by bike or on foot and you finish facing Santiago Calatrava's futuristic complex, stepping from a millennium-old city straight into the space age, the most enjoyable and cheapest route in town.