The City of Arts and Sciences

We first came to Valencia in November 2004 having already committed ourselves to buying the plot of land here at Monte Pego and building our house. On the previous trip, that September, when we took the plunge, we had travelled via Alicante airport and so when we chose the location of our house we didn't really take the proximity of Valencia into account and nor did we know much about it.

On that first stay in Valencia we fell in love with the city - Carmen (the old quarter), the local football team (with its noisy old concrete stadium) and especially the new museums that had been constructed in the dry river bed that is now a linear park. Our infatuation with the city has deepened over time and we now feel very much at home as Suzanne deftly pilots the car through the local traffic or as we sit listening to the locals barrack the referees at Mestalla Stadium (occasionally joining in and thereby widening and adding colour to our Spanish vocabulary).

More than six years later we have still not been to an exhibition in the museums but it is the architecture of the buildings that most captured our attention.  The buildings are ten years old now but still beautiful. They are gradually becoming an icon for the city in much the same way as the Opera House did in Sydney. The complex is known as La Ciudad de las Artes y las Ciencias (the city of arts and sciences) and includes an I-max cinema, science museum, aquarium, arts museum, botanical gardens and exhibition areas. It is built where the Turia river used to snake through the city down to the port until it had to be diverted away from the city after the floods of 1956.

For the tenth anniversary of the complex the landscaping around the museums has finally been completed and when we visited a couple of days ago the futuristic buildings were shimmering in the early spring sunshine, a stark counterpoint to the traditions of the Las Fallas festival being acted out a short distance away in the old town.