Valencia: history and heritage

About Valencia: history and heritage

By the ULTIMATE Valencia Editorial Team

Editor-in-Chief: Jai Michael

Valencia was founded by Romans, irrigated by the Moors and enriched by silk. Its orchards, the huerta, are still watered by canals laid out more than a thousand years ago, and the farmers who share that water still settle their disputes every Thursday at the cathedral door.

At a glance

Population: 825,948 in the city of Valencia (INE, 1 January 2024): Spain’s third city.

Names through history: Valentia (Roman), Balansiya (Arabic), València (Valencian) and Valencia.

Every Thursday at noon, the Water Court meets at the cathedral door, as it has for some thousand years.

Languages: Valencian, the local form of Catalan, and Spanish are both official.

UNESCO heritage: La Lonja de la Seda (World Heritage, 1996); the Water Court of the Valencian Plain and the Fallas festival (intangible heritage, 2009 and 2016).

Roman Valentia

The Romans founded Valentia in 138 BC on an island in the River Turia, for veterans of the Lusitanian wars. Its forum lay beneath today’s Plaza de la Almoina, where the archaeological centre lets you see Roman, Visigothic and Moorish remains under a glass pool.

Balansiya

From the eighth century the city was Balansiya, part of al-Andalus. The Moors perfected the irrigation of the huerta, with its eight canals, and brought rice, oranges and sugar cane: the roots of paella and horchata. The knight El Cid held the city from 1094 until his death in 1099.

The Kingdom of Valencia

In 1238 James I of Aragon took the city and founded the Kingdom of Valencia within the Crown of Aragon, with its own laws, the Furs. The Torres de Serranos, the great gate of 1392, survive from the walls of that kingdom.

The golden century

In the fifteenth century Valencia was one of the richest cities in the Mediterranean. Merchants built La Lonja de la Seda (1482–1533), whose hall of twisted columns is UNESCO World Heritage, and the city printed some of Spain’s first books. The cathedral keeps a chalice venerated as the Holy Grail, and the Valencian writer Joanot Martorell wrote the chivalric novel Tirant lo Blanc, printed here in 1490.

Language and traditions

After the floods of 1957 the Turia was diverted, and its old bed became a nine-kilometre park ending at Santiago Calatrava’s City of Arts and Sciences. Traditions remain strong: the Fallas each March, the Water Court on Thursdays at noon, and paella, born in the rice fields of the Albufera.

Our advice: be at the Apostles’ Door of the cathedral at noon on a Thursday for the Water Court, then visit La Lonja and the Mercado Central opposite. Cycle the Turia gardens to the City of Arts and Sciences in the late afternoon.

Sources

Population: Instituto Nacional de Estadística (INE), official population figures at 1 January 2024 (Royal Decree 1210/2024). History: Ajuntament de València; Centro Arqueológico de l’Almoina; UNESCO World Heritage Centre and Intangible Cultural Heritage lists; Visit València.

Opening hours, prices and seasonal openings change, so please check with Valencia: history and heritage before you go.