This is all reflected in the architecture and atmosphere of the city. Valencia, capital of both Valencia provincia (province) and the comunidad autónoma (autonomous community) of Valencia, and historical capital of the former kingdom of Valencia, eastern Spain. Located on the Mediterranean coast at the mouth of the Turia (Guadalaviar) River, it is surrounded by orchards in a region known as the Huerta de Valencia.
The earliest mention (Valentia) is by the Roman historian Livy, who states that the consul Decimus Junius Brutus Callaicus settled the soldier veterans of the Lusitanian leader Viriathus there in 138 BCE. It later became a prosperous Roman colony.
Taken by the Visigoths in 413 CE and in 714 by the Moors, it became in 1021 the seat of the newly established independent Moorish kingdom of Valencia, which extended from Almería to the Ebro estuary. From 1089 until the final capitulation of the city in 1094, the kingdom was fought for by the Spanish soldier-hero El Cid, who eventually secured it from the Moorish Almoravids. It remained in the hands of El Cid, after whom it is sometimes called Valencia del Cid, until his death there in 1099. The Moors recovered the city (and kingdom) in 1102.
In 1238 James I of Aragon added Valencia to his dominions, but the kingdom continued to be administered separately, with its own laws and parliament. In 1479, with the other countries of the Aragonese crown, the kingdom was united with Castile under the monarchs Ferdinand and Isabella, resulting in a long period of peace during which the city developed rapidly and the arts prospered. The first Spanish printing press is said to have been set up there in 1474, and during the next two centuries the city was the seat of the Valencian school of painting. During the Spanish Civil War it was the loyalist capital from 1936 to 1939.
Valencia has many botanical gardens and museums of art and ceramics. The City of Arts and Sciences is a large complex that features a planetarium, science museum, and arboretum.
Noted for its unique architecture, the complex includes L’Hemisfèric (The Eye of Wisdom), an eye-shaped building designed by Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava, and L’Oceanogràfic (Underwater City), Europe’s largest marine centre. The city’s educational institutions include the University of Valencia (1499).
Valencia’s renowned annual Fallas Festival commemorates St. Joseph, the patron saint of carpenters, and draws thousands of spectators to the city each March. The fallas are towering monuments, effigies made of papier-mâché and wax (and sometimes cork and wood) that together create a scene. (Each individual figure is known as a ninot.) The monuments can take up to a year to create and are usually satirical or humorous in nature. On the eve of St. Joseph’s feast day, all the fallas are burned in the streets, except for those ninots that are voted the best, which are preserved in the city’s Museum of Las Fallas. The city also has a traditional bullfighting arena, and bullfights become a main attraction during the Fallas Festival.
