A brief overview of Valencia from Yahoo! Travel:
Valencia is emerging as one of the nation's most progressive cities. Spain's third largest, it continues to reinvent itself at a heady pace, and is well on the way to equalling the cosmopolitan vitality of Barcelona and the cultural variety of Madrid. In the last decade or so, the vast, iconic Ciudad de las Artes y Ciencias – has emerged, a metro has opened and dozens of hip new bars, restaurants and boutiques have injected new life into the historic centre.
Despite its size and stylista cachet, Valencia retains an unpretentious if tangibly charged air. With low-cost airlines bussing in visitors by the planeload, tourism has also hit the city in a big way, and the ubiquitous English breakfast has become a fixture.
The most atmospheric area to explore is undoubtedly the maze-like streets of the Barrio del Carmen (in Valenciano "de Carmé"), roughly the area north of the Mercado Central to the Río Turia. This once-neglected quarter of the city continues to regenerate, making for an incredibly vibrant, alternative neighbourhood. The city walls were pulled down in 1871 to make way for a ring road, and the beautiful church of Santo Domingo, in Plaza de Tetuan, has been converted into the barracks from which that General Milans del Bosch ordered his tanks during the abortive coup of 1981.
The oldest part of the city is almost entirely encircled by a great loop of the Río Turia, now a landscaped riverbed park. The ancient stone bridges remain, but the riverbed now houses cycle ways, footpaths and football pitches, as well as the astonishing Ciudad de las Artes y Ciencias, Europe's largest cultural complex.
Valencia's main beach is the Playa de la Malvarrosa to the east of the city centre, which becomes Playa de las Arenas at its southern end.
The city has long boasted some of the best nightlife to be found in mainland Spain. Its fiestas are among the most riotous in Spain; Las Fallas, March 12–19, culminates in a massive bonfire where all the processional floats are burned.
A little more history:
The province of Valencia, the largest of the three making up the Valencian community, is situated in the centre of the Spanish Mediterranean coastline while overlooking the spacious Gulf of Valencia; it is skirted at the back by a group of medium-high mountains and rolling plains leading to the lands of Aragon and Castile-La Mancha. It is also opposite the Balearic islands and equidistant from the country's two major decision-taking centres: Madrid and Barcelona. Valencia is a place identified with the Mediterranean Sea because its culture deriving from the old Mare Nostrum is shown in its patterns of social behaviour. |
Furthermore, Valencia City is the administrative capital of the Valencian community and the centre of the region of L'Horta. Valencia is the most densely populated town in the region as it is encircled by a wide belt of medium-sized districts with an average density of 1,600 inhabitants per square kilometre forming an unbroken built-up area.
A bit of light travelling in Valencia
Sightseeing around the city begins in the old quarter. Until the mid-nineteenth century, it was defended by a wall, which was the inner route of the no 5 bus. Still standing as a proof are the graceful Torres de Serranos, the spacious Torres de Quart and some remains of the apron wall in the basement of the Valencia Institute of Modern Arts (IVAM). The most outstanding artistic heritage is the one found in the districts of Seu and Xerea, where the marks left by the Romans lie hidden beneath Arab ruins and modern churches and palaces.
The Center of Valencia
The Mercat district took shape around the trading life of the city's inhabitants. Accordingly, its two most emblematic buildings are used for trading purposes. The Gothic building of La Lonja, declared by UNESCO as a universal heritage monument, features a beautiful columned room where the old tables on which trading transactions were finalised are still in use today. Outside the destroyed wall grew the Valencia of the bourgeoisie, with its wide pavements, broad landscaped thoroughfares and countless instances of modernist architecture. On the other side of the Turia's old riverbed lie the nursery gardens, along with the Fine Arts Museum and the ultramodern part of the city which, on account of its size, serves as a nexus between the coastal townships and the old quarter. The futuristic face of the city is mirrored on the old riverbed through the Gulliver Children's park and the leisure and culture complex, the Ciutat de les Arts i de les Ciencies (the City of Arts & Culture). Life in the city spreads down to the seafront with the harbour and the beaches of Las Arenas and La Malvarrosa.
Ciutat de les Arts i de les Ciencies
La Malvarrosa
The Mediterranean
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