Four days in Valencia: the city moved its river and made a park of the bed

The cathedral and the Roman layers underneath it on arrival, Calatrava's white shells on the second day, the medieval gates and El Carmen on the third, and the silk exchange before the train.

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Length
4 days, 3 nights
Where you stay
Valencia
Places
11 across 4 days
OpenFreeMap © OpenMapTiles Data from OpenStreetMap

Valencia flooded catastrophically in 1957, and rather than rebuild the embankments the city moved the river. The Turia now runs round the southern edge of town, and the old bed through the middle became nine kilometres of gardens: football pitches, orange trees, running tracks and cycle paths, with the medieval gates at one end and a science city of white concrete at the other.

That park is the reason Valencia works so well over a few days. It links everything, it is flat, and it means the walk between the old town and the modern one happens under trees rather than beside traffic. The old town itself is Gothic and comparatively small: a cathedral that claims to hold the Holy Grail, a silk exchange that is one of the best secular Gothic buildings anywhere, and a market hall the size of a railway station.

It is also where paella comes from, which locals will remind you of, and where the beach is twenty-five minutes away on a tram. Four days covers all of it without hurrying: three nights, one hotel, and no day that cannot be walked or cycled.

Highlights

  • The Holy Chalice, a first century agate cup in a side chapel of the cathedral
  • Climbing the octagonal bell tower for the roofs of the old town and the sea beyond
  • Calatrava's white shells rising out of a sunken garden where the river used to be
  • The twisted stone columns of the silk exchange, carved to look like rope under tension

Where to stay

Valencia, three nights

One base for all four days. The old town is about a kilometre across, the science city is twenty-five minutes down the park by bike or bus, and the beach is a tram ride.

The climate is the mild version of Spain: hot but not Andalusian in summer, and warm enough in December that people are eating outdoors. Rain, when it comes, arrives all at once in autumn.

Day by day

Day 1 in Valencia

Roman foundations, the cathedral and the bell tower

Everything on this afternoon is within two hundred metres, which suits a day that starts with luggage. The square behind the cathedral has a glass floor over the layers of the city, and going down into it first makes the rest of the old town legible: Roman forum, Visigothic cathedral, Moorish street, Gothic wall, all stacked in one hole.

Then the cathedral itself, which is worth the audio guide for once because of what is in the side chapel, and the bell tower afterwards for the roofs and the sea. Come out into the square in front of it in the evening, when the city is out and the fountain is lit.

  1. 15:30

    Centre Arqueològic de l'Almoina

    Historic

    An excavation left open under a glass floor, uncovered in the 1980s when a building site turned up the Roman forum. You walk down through fifteen centuries in one room: baths, a Visigothic burial ground, the Moorish alcazar, and the medieval level the current city sits on. Half an hour, and the best possible orientation.

  2. 16:30

    Catedral de Santa María de València

    Religious

    Begun in 1262 on a site that had been a Roman temple, then a Visigothic church, then the main mosque, and finished over several centuries in several minds. The reason to go in is the chapel holding the Holy Chalice, an agate cup dated to the first century, used as the papal chalice by two visiting popes and the most seriously argued candidate anywhere for the Grail. There are also two Goyas.

  3. 18:00

    Micalet

    Architecture

    The cathedral's octagonal bell tower, 51 metres of 14th and 15th century stone with a tight spiral stair inside and no lift. From the top the old town is a plain of terracotta roofs with the sea on one side and the mountains on the other. Sold as a separate ticket, and the climb is more than it looks.

  4. 21:00

    Dinner in the old town

    Eat

    The square on the north side of the cathedral fills up in the evening. Eat a street or two back from it, where the same food costs a third less and the tables are not aimed at the fountain.

With more time: The medieval granary a few streets east is a Gothic hall built on a Moorish palace and now used for exhibitions, and the 14th century bathhouse near it is one of the few Arab baths left on this coast. Both take twenty minutes and neither is ever busy.

Day 2 in Valencia

Down the old riverbed to the City of Arts and Sciences

The whole day is a walk or a cycle down the dry river. From the old town the park runs southeast for about three kilometres, under nineteen bridges, past pine groves and orange trees, and it ends at a complex of white shells and reflecting pools that looks like nothing else in Europe.

How long you spend inside depends on what you like. The buildings are free to walk among and photograph, and the ticketed attractions are the aquarium, the science museum and the planetarium. One of them is a morning; two is a full day and about as much as anybody enjoys.

  1. 10:00

    Ciutat de les Arts i les Ciències

    Culture

    Santiago Calatrava's white city on the old riverbed, built between 1998 and 2009: an eye-shaped planetarium that opens like a lid, a science museum shaped like a whale skeleton, an opera house under a steel feather, and a cable-stayed bridge whose tower is the tallest structure in Valencia. Walking through it costs nothing and is half the point.

  2. 13:00

    L’Oceanogràfic

    Leisure

    The largest aquarium in Europe, laid out as separate buildings for separate seas with tunnels between them, under a roof by Félix Candela shaped like a water lily. Beluga whales, a walrus, a proper shark tunnel and an Arctic section. Book a slot online; it is the one thing here that queues.

  3. 16:30

    L’Umbracle

    Nature

    The long open gallery of arches at the northern end, planted with palms, bougainvillea and the plants that grow along this coast, with a sculpture walk under it. Free, shaded, and the best place on the site to sit down at the end of the afternoon.

With more time: The zoo on the far side of town is built without visible cages, with sunken barriers instead, and is the other big-ticket thing here. For families, the giant reclining figure in the park halfway down is a climbing frame in the shape of Gulliver, tied down by the Lilliputians, and it is free.

Day 3 in Valencia

The city gates, El Carmen and the beach

Valencia pulled down its walls in 1865 and kept two gates, one at each end of El Carmen, and both can be climbed for a few euros. Between them lies the oldest and scruffiest quarter of the city, which is where the murals, the small bars and the convent-turned-art-centre are.

Keep the afternoon for the sea. The tram takes twenty-five minutes to the old fishermen's quarter behind the beach, where the houses are tiled in stripes and the rice restaurants along the front are the ones worth the money.

  1. 09:30

    Torres de Serrano

    Architecture

    The northern gate, built in 1392 and one of the largest Gothic city gates in Europe, with the back left open so the defenders could not use it against the city. It was the municipal prison for three hundred years. Climb it: the roof gives you the old town on one side and the park on the other, and it costs almost nothing.

  2. 10:45

    Centre del Carme

    Religious

    A Carmelite convent from the 13th century, disused for a long time and now the city's contemporary art centre, with two cloisters and free entry. The exhibitions change constantly and the building is the reason to go in whatever is on.

  3. 12:30

    Torres de Quart

    Architecture

    The western gate, finished in the 1460s, squatter and blunter than its northern cousin and still pitted with holes from French cannon fire during the siege of 1808. Same cheap ticket, same climb, and from the top you look straight down the old road out of town.

  4. 14:00

    Paella by the sea

    Eat

    Take the tram to the beach and eat at two, which is when rice is cooked here. Order for the table, expect to wait forty minutes, and do not accept anything that arrives faster than that.

With more time: The Gothic shipyards near the port are four vaulted stone halls where galleys were built to fight Barbary corsairs, and they are open when there is an exhibition in them. If Fallas fascinates you, the museum near the science city keeps the one figure pardoned from the fire each year since 1934.

Day 4 in Valencia

The silk exchange and the market before the train

Two buildings face each other across a square ten minutes west of the cathedral, and between them they are the best hour in Valencia. One is a Gothic hall built to trade silk when this was one of the richest cities in the Mediterranean; the other is a market that has been feeding the same streets ever since.

Both are five minutes from the old town and twenty from the station, which makes this the right last morning whatever time the train goes.

  1. 09:30

    Banys de l'Almirall

    Other

    A bathhouse from 1313, built in the Arabic manner forty years after the Christian conquest and used continuously into the 20th century. Three vaulted rooms with star-shaped skylights, cool and almost silent. Twenty minutes, and it is on the way from most of the old town.

  2. 10:15

    Llotja de la Seda

    Other

    The silk exchange, built between 1482 and 1533 and one of the finest secular Gothic buildings in Europe. The trading hall is a forest of stone columns twisted like rope under tension, rising into palm-frond vaults; the tower next door was the debtors' prison. Small, cheap and startling, and free on Sundays.

  3. 11:30

    Breakfast in the Mercat Central

    Eat

    Across the square, a modernista iron and glass market hall from 1928 and one of the largest fresh food markets in Europe. Almost a thousand stalls, a dome over the fish, and bars inside doing bread, tomato and ham at eleven in the morning.

With more time: With a later train, the ceramics museum is in a palace whose doorway is carved into a cliff of alabaster and is worth seeing from outside even if you skip the porcelain. Horchata with fartons at any of the old parlours near the market is the correct way to fill a spare hour.

Before you go

Where to stay

Ciutat Vella, the old town, is where three of these four days start and finish. Within it, the streets around the cathedral and the market are convenient and busy, and El Carmen to the northwest is the atmospheric option: crumbling and restored in equal measure, and noisy at weekends.

L'Eixample and Russafa, south of the old town, are the local choice: 19th century blocks, a grid, tree-lined streets and the best concentration of restaurants in the city. Fifteen minutes to the cathedral on foot and five to the main station.

The beach at Malvarrosa and the tiled streets of El Cabanyal behind it are a different holiday: sand, seafood, and half an hour on the tram to anything historic. Good in summer, remote in February.

Getting in and around

The fast train from Madrid takes about an hour and three quarters and arrives at Joaquín Sorolla, which sits just behind the old Estació del Nord, a tiled modernista station worth ten minutes of anybody's time. A free shuttle bus links the two. From Barcelona the coastal service takes around three hours.

The airport is 8 km west and metro lines 3 and 5 run from it into the centre in about twenty minutes. There is no separate airport supplement worth worrying about.

Valencia is flat, which makes it the best cycling city in Spain. The public hire scheme has stations everywhere, and the old riverbed gives you a traffic-free route across the whole city. If you only cycle once, do it in the park.

The beach is reached by tram line 4 or the metro to Marítim, about twenty-five minutes from the centre. Everything else on these four days is walkable or a short ride down the park.

What to book ahead

Very little, which is part of the appeal. The aquarium is the exception: it is the busiest thing in the city and a timed online ticket saves both money and a queue, particularly at weekends and in August. Combined tickets covering the science museum, the planetarium and the aquarium are cheaper than buying separately if you want two or more.

The cathedral and the bell tower are sold separately and neither needs booking. The tower is a narrow spiral of stone steps with no lift and no passing places.

The silk exchange and the two medieval gates are cheap, walk-in, and free on Sundays along with several other municipal sites, which is worth arranging a Sunday morning around.

Las Fallas, in the third week of March, is one of the loudest festivals in Europe: papier-mâché monuments the height of buildings, gunpowder concerts at two every afternoon, and everything burned on the last night. Book months out or go another time, because the city is full and the streets are closed.

Eating: paella and the rest

Paella is from here and locals are exact about it. The Valencian original is rabbit, chicken, flat green beans and butter beans, cooked over wood, with no chorizo and no seafood; the seafood version is a different dish rather than the same one improved. It is a lunch, cooked to order for two people minimum, and it takes forty minutes. Anywhere serving it in the evening from a warmed tray is selling to visitors.

The rice dishes worth trying beside it are arròs a banda, cooked in fish stock and served without the fish, and arròs negre, black with squid ink. The best of them are eaten in the Albufera villages south of the city or in the old fishermen's quarter by the beach rather than in the middle of town.

Horchata, orxata in Valencian, is a cold sweet drink pressed from tiger nuts, and it comes with fartons, long soft buns for dipping. It is the mid-afternoon habit here, and the town of Alboraia just north of the city is where the crop comes from.

Dinner starts late, around nine. Russafa is the neighbourhood to be in for it.

Valencia is the Spanish city people come back from surprised. It has a Gothic old town, a beach, the best park of any city in the country and prices that have not caught up with any of it.

If you add a day, go south to the Albufera. Freshwater lagoon, rice paddies, flat-bottomed boats and a sunset that turns the whole thing orange, twenty minutes from the city and a different century.

Make it your trip

Every stop, day and place here lands in your account as an editable trip. Move the days around, swap a city, add your own bookings and costs, and share it with whoever is coming.

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Common questions

Is four days enough for Valencia?
It is comfortable, and it leaves an afternoon spare. If you want the Albufera lagoon and the rice fields south of the city, which is where paella actually comes from, add half a day and go for the sunset boat.
Is the City of Arts and Sciences worth the money?
Walking around the outside is free and is genuinely the best part. Of the paid attractions the aquarium is the strongest, the science museum is aimed at children and does that well, and the planetarium is a forty minute film. Pick one rather than all three.
Where should I eat paella?
At lunch, never at dinner, and in the old fishermen's quarter by the beach or in one of the Albufera villages rather than on a central square. It is cooked to order and takes about forty minutes, which is the test: if it comes quickly it was made earlier for somebody else.
Valencia or Barcelona?
Barcelona for the architecture and the scale. Valencia for a city that is a third the size, half the price, far less crowded, and has a better beach inside its own tram network. Three hours apart on the coastal line, and Valencia is the easier trip if it is a first visit to Spain with children.
Should I go during Las Fallas?
Only if the festival is the reason for the trip. From 15 to 19 March the city is full, hotel prices multiply, streets close for the parades, and there is a gunpowder concert in the main square at two every afternoon that you will feel in your chest. Extraordinary, and impossible to sightsee around.
When is the best time to go?
May, June, September and October, when it is warm enough for the beach and not too hot for the old town. Winter is mild and quiet, and the sea is swimmable from about June to late October.