Center of the City

The centre of Valencia offers to the visitor a wide range of monuments and buildings to admire. The most important are quite close to each another, so they can be seen walking or biking. You can reach the centre by bus; the lines 19, 31 and 32 will take you there in approximately 25 minutes.

            In the Plaza del Ayuntamiento (Town Hall Square) there are two emblematic buildings, Valencia’s Town Hall on the one hand and the Central Post Office in the other hand. The Town Hall can’t be visited normally, but sometimes there are Open House days. The Central Post Office can be visited, as it acts as a regular post office. In this building you should not miss the dome in the central hall and the mail boxes that look like lion heads in one of the sides of the building, in the street Correos.

            In the Plaza del Mercado (Market Square) there are other two buildings that no visitor should miss. The first one is the Central Market that opens Monday to Saturday on mornings until 14:30. This market has lots of activity and people coming in and out every day. Here you can find all kind of fresh products such as meat, fish or vegetables and preserved goods as jams or pickled vegetables. The Central Market has its own parking, which is for free if you make purchases in the stalls. You won’t find it difficult to find anything you want; there are nearly 1.000 stalls open daily.

In front of the Market is the Lonja de la Seda, declared World Heritage by UNESCO. This building, built between the XIV and XV centuries, was the meeting point of silk merchants. Silk was a very important industry in Valencia at that time. Here important commercial deals took place and there was an important organism to judge commercial and maritime issues. The lower part has a big lounge with spiral columns that was the dealing area, and in the upper floor there was where the Sea Consulate made its meetings.

Near the Town Hall Square and besides the Bull Ring (Plaza de Toros) there is another building worth visiting, the “Estación del Norte” (North Station) that belongs to the national railways network. Its structure and its amazing hall decorated with carved wood and mosaics are a surprising example of modernist architecture.