The city that invented paella, sent architecture into the future with Calatrava's City of Arts and Sciences, and hosts Europe's biggest pyrotechnic street festival — Las Fallas burns 700 giant sculptures to ash every March
Valencia is Spain's third-largest city (800,000) on the Mediterranean coast, the birthplace of paella and the unofficial capital of Mediterranean Spanish culture. The Ciudad de las Artes y las Ciencias (City of Arts and Sciences) — a 350,000 sq m futuristic complex by Santiago Calatrava and Félix Candela, built 1998–2009 — houses a planetarium, science museum, opera house, and Europe's largest aquarium. The Mercado Central (1928) is one of Europe's largest covered fresh-food markets, under Art Nouveau ironwork and stained glass. Las Fallas festival (15–19 March, UNESCO Intangible Heritage) cl…
Valentia was founded as a Roman colony in 138 BCE, one of the earliest Roman cities on the Iberian Peninsula. The city passed to the Visigoths, then the Moors (who introduced irrigation channels — the acequia system that still supplies Valencia's famous rice fields — in 711 CE), then the Crown of Aragon under James I in 1238. Valencia was the capital of the Kingdom of Valencia and during the 15th century the most prosperous city on the Iberian Peninsula, exporting silk, ceramics, and rice through its port of Grao. El Cid (Rodrigo Díaz de Vivar) captured and ruled Valencia 1094–1099, an episod…