Valencia is a little over an hour up the coast from Dénia by car — Spain’s third city, but low-rise and easy to walk. It makes an easy day out, or a night away.
The City of Arts and Sciences
The Ciutat de les Arts i les Ciències is Santiago Calatrava’s run of white buildings along the old riverbed: the eye-shaped Hemisfèric cinema, the science museum, the opera house, and the Oceanogràfic — the largest aquarium in Europe. Worth it for the architecture alone; the Oceanogràfic is the one to book if you’re travelling with children.
The old town
The Mercat Central is one of the biggest covered markets in Europe, in a 1920s iron-and-tile hall — go in the morning. Across the square, the Gothic Llotja de la Seda (the old silk exchange, UNESCO-listed); a short walk away, the cathedral with its bell tower you can climb and a chapel that is said to hold the Holy Grail. Around it, the narrow lanes of the Barri del Carme.
The Plaza del Ayuntamiento
The city’s main civic square, a short walk from the market, is framed by the flower stalls, the grand old post office, and the town hall — the Ayuntamiento — whose balcony is the centre of the Fallas festival in March. It is the dividing line between the medieval old town and the nineteenth-century Eixample, and an easy point to get your bearings.
Paella
This is where it comes from. The traditional Valencian version is rice with rabbit, chicken and beans — no seafood — cooked over wood and eaten at lunch, never dinner. The places out by the Albufera lagoon, just south of the city, are where locals go for it on a Sunday.
The Turia gardens
After the river was diverted following the 1957 floods, the old bed was turned into a park that runs about nine kilometres through the middle of the city. Renting a bike is the easiest way to cross town and it leads straight to the City of Arts and Sciences at the far end.
Good to know
- A bit over an hour by car from Dénia; there is also a coach (ALSA) if you’d rather not drive
- Summer middays are very hot — do the market and old town early, the gardens or aquarium later
- Oceanogràfic and the science museum are cheaper bought together