Valencia Art, Architecture & Culture: the back story

About Valencia Art, Architecture & Culture: the back story

By the ULTIMATE Valencia Editorial Team

Editor-in-Chief: Jai Michael

Valencia tells its story in stone and in light. The old walled city keeps a Gothic silk exchange on UNESCO's list and a cathedral that grew over a Roman temple; the old bed of the Turia has become a nine-kilometre garden that ends at Santiago Calatrava's City of Arts and Sciences; and every March the whole city turns into an open-air sculpture show before it burns. Here is the back story, and where to see it.

Gothic Valencia

The old walled city, Ciutat Vella, is bounded by the Turia Garden and the line of the old walls, and you enter it through great gates: the Torres de Serranos to the north and the Torres de Quart to the west. At its heart, Valencia Cathedral was built between the 13th and 15th centuries on the site of a Roman temple and later a mosque, and it keeps the Holy Chalice in a chapel of its own. Its bell tower, El Miguelete, built between 1381 and 1424, gives you the best view over the rooftops.

Valencia's finest Gothic building is not a church but a trading hall. La Lonja de la Seda, the Silk Exchange, was built from 1483 under the architects Pere Compte and Joan Ivarra and was first given over to the silk trade. UNESCO inscribed it on the World Heritage List in 1996 and describes it as an exceptionally well-preserved late-Gothic secular building; nearly half of it is the Sala de Contratación, with its twisted columns. The Mercado Central faces it across the Plaza del Mercado.

Valencia is a city where a river became a garden and a garden became a gallery.

On Thursdays at noon, at the door of the cathedral on the Plaza de la Virgen, the Water Court sits to settle the irrigation disputes of the Valencian huerta, a tradition you can still watch today.

Painting and ceramics

The Museu de Belles Arts, at San Pío V by the Turia Garden, holds Valencian painting of every era, including Joaquín Sorolla, with Gothic altarpieces and works by Goya, Velázquez, El Greco, Murillo, Van Dyck and Bosch. It is one of the great painting collections of Spain and the place to fall for Sorolla's light.

In the old town, the Museo Nacional de Cerámica y Artes Suntuarias González Martí fills the Palacio del Marqués de Dos Aguas, behind its extravagant carved alabaster doorway, with what Visit Valencia calls the most extensive collection of ceramics in Spain. Valencia's tile and pottery tradition lives on in the shops of the circular Plaza Redonda, devoted to ceramics, lace and Valencian crafts.

The river that became a garden

Valencia's greatest change happened in its river. After the Turia was diverted south of the city, its old bed became the Jardín del Turia, a garden about nine kilometres long, crossed by 18 bridges. It runs from the Parque de Cabecera and Bioparc past the old town and the fine-arts museum, under bridges old and new, to the City of Arts and Sciences. Walk it or ride it end to end on a Valenbisi bike.

Calatrava and Candela

At the eastern end of the garden, the City of Arts and Sciences stretches for almost two kilometres along the old riverbed. Santiago Calatrava designed the Hemisfèric of 1998, the Science Museum and the Umbracle of 2000, the Palau de les Arts of 2005 and the Àgora; the roofs of the Oceanogràfic, opened in 2003, are by Félix Candela.

The Palau de les Arts is Valencia's opera house, with a Sala Principal of 1,412 seats for opera and ballet and an Auditori of 1,490 for concerts; come for a performance and you see the white shells lit above their pools at night. The Àgora now houses CaixaForum Valencia, with exhibitions under Calatrava's roof.

Contemporary Valencia

IVAM, the Institut Valencià d'Art Modern, was created in 1986 and its main building, the Centre Julio González, opened in 1989 at the edge of El Carmen. Its starting point was the acquisition of 360 works by the sculptor Julio González, and it shows modern and contemporary art in a building by the Valencian architects Emilio Giménez and Carlos Salvadores. Nearby, the Centre del Carme Cultura Contemporània fills the former royal convent of El Carmen with exhibitions, concerts and talks.

In the old town, the Centro de Arte Hortensia Herrero opened on 11 November 2023 in the restored Palacio Valeriola on Calle del Mar, showing more than a hundred works from Hortensia Herrero's collection, from Miró, Tàpies and Manolo Valdés to Anish Kapoor and Anselm Kiefer. The Fundación Bancaja, on Plaza Tetuán, stages temporary exhibitions by national and international artists.

North of the river, in a restored factory on Avenida de Burjassot, Bombas Gens is now home to the Centre d'Arts Digitals, Valencia's permanent centre for immersive and audiovisual art, with Ricard Camarena's restaurant in the same complex.

The Fallas

Valencia's most famous art is made to be burned. During the Fallas, inscribed by UNESCO as intangible cultural heritage in 2016, giant sculptures, the fallas, rise on squares across the city, with the main days from 15 to 19 March. On the night of the Crema they go up in flames, all but one figure each year, the ninot indultat, which is pardoned and joins the collection of the Museo Fallero on Plaza Monteolivete.

Cultural calendar

The Fallas: the main days run from 15 to 19 March; the official programme is on visitvalencia.com and valencia.es.

Palau de les Arts: the current opera, ballet and concert season is on lesarts.com.

IVAM, the Centro de Arte Hortensia Herrero and Bombas Gens: current exhibitions are on each centre's own website.

What's new

The Centro de Arte Hortensia Herrero, open since November 2023 in the Palacio Valeriola, has become the newest major art space of the old town. Checked October 2026 on cahh.es.

Bombas Gens Centre d'Arts Digitals is now Valencia's permanent centre for immersive and audiovisual art. Checked October 2026 on bombasgens.com.

Our advice: start on the Plaza de la Virgen on a Thursday for the Water Court, spend the afternoon in the Lonja and the Belles Arts, then cycle the Turia Garden to the City of Arts and Sciences for an evening at the opera.

Opening hours, prices and seasonal openings change, so please check with Valencia Art, Architecture & Culture: the back story before you go.