Things to do and see if you only have 36 hours in Valencia, Spain

Founded by the Romans in 138 B.C. and long famous as the birthplace of paella, Spain’s third-largest city has recently garnered other titles – it was 2022’s World Design Capital and 2024’s European Green Capital for its vast swaths of urban green spaces and bike and pedestrian zones. In October, Valencia made international news for devastating floods, which spared the city but tore violently through neighbouring towns and villages. Tourist revenue is now vital to that recovery, though Valencia’s 300 days of sunshine each year and miles of beaches have long attracted visitors. A growing cadre of international residents – artists, artisans, designers and digital nomads – drawn by Valencia’s easy seaside lifestyle, vibrant cultural scene, exuberant architecture and amazing gastronomy, is adding a new layer to this bustling port city’s already potent allure.

FRIDAY

5pm | Visit the Prado of clay

The production of ceramic tableware and decorative architectural tiles has been a fundamental part of Valencian industry and culture for so long that the city is home to Spain’s national museum of clay. The Gonzalez Marti National Museum of Ceramics and Sumptuary Arts (entrance fee; 3 euros, or about US$3.25) showcases ceramics from fifth-century B.C. Greek wine servers to shimmering 15th-century lusterware glazes perfected by Valencia’s Hispano-Muslim artisans, onward to Pablo Picasso’s playful plates from the 1950s and up to the present day. Located in the Palacio del Marques de Dos Aguas, an architectural festival of Baroque excess filled with gorgeous furniture, ornate carriages and sumptuous silk brocades, the museum vividly represents Valencians’ penchant for gilding the lily. See the very latest in Valencian porcelain at Lladro, which has its flagship store just 100 yards away.

6.30pm | Explore and shop

With its fanciful Art Nouveau and Art Deco apartment buildings, Ruzafa has evolved into one of Valencia’s hippest neighbourhoods. It’s vibrant on a Friday afternoon when the local lunch crowd lingers for cocktails and the party spirit spreads to retailers around Calle de Cuba like the motorcycle-themed Cafe 55 Alternative Life with T-shirts (25 euros) designed by the owner, Victor Carricho. DDL Boutique serves fresh juices, decadent milkshakes and sweets like berlina, puff pastry filled with mascarpone and raspberries (4 euros). Nearby Cuit sells elegantly simple ceramics in muted colours (20 to 35 euros) and Gnomo features a mixed array of crafts and products by local artists and designers. Laka has an ample selection of 1970s Puma T-shirts (30 euros) and Adidas track suits (45 to 70 euros).

9pm | Sample Earth’s bounty

SATURDAY

9am | Choose your coffee

Valencians take their coffee seriously, and the city is brimming with options for virtually every iteration of the brew. Bluebell goes a bit further than many and roasts its own beans on site, which can be purchased to take back home. Preparations for a cup of the fresh stuff in its charmingly eclectic cafe in Ruzafa range from the classic Spanish cafe solo (1.60 euros) to an espresso tonic (4.10 euros). Among the equally inventive breakfast options are a vegan chia pudding with rice milk and mango (8.50 euros), baked apple pancakes and sesame praline (13 euros), or hearty pulled pork on a waffle (15 euros) to strike the perfect savoury-sweet balance.

10am | Tour the centre

“When a city is rich, you can see it in the architecture,” said Boris Strzelczyk of Guiding Architects, which deploys local architects as guides to explain why and how cities around the world look as they do. Valencia has had several golden ages over the centuries, providing a vivid tapestry of building styles from which to summon history. A two-hour tour (250 euros) takes visitors from the site of the ancient Roman forum to the city’s cathedral (begun in the 13th century) and the 16th-century Gothic Silk Exchange (a UNESCO World Heritage Site), on to more recent landmarks, including the Modernista (the Spanish term for Art Nouveau) Central Market, opened in 1928, and the 21st-century City of the Arts and the Sciences. Contemporary urban developments are also highlighted, like the ongoing campaign to return the city centre to its pedestrian roots.

2pm | Enjoy a Moroccan meal

After a morning immersed in the city’s florid architecture, Dukala’s understated interior — a few handsome Moroccan weavings tenting the ceiling — signals a shift to another Mediterranean culture, albeit one with deep roots in Valencia. The Moroccan salad (11 euros) of finely diced tomatoes, cucumber and onion in a light, cumin-infused vinaigrette is as simple as it is addictive. Mains include a bastela Azama (15 euros), a flaky chicken and almond pie perfumed with cinnamon, and a tender beef tagine sweetened with tangy prunes (17 euros). For dessert, the creamy goat cheese flan with dates and honey (6 euros) contrasts with the intensity of chocolate and ginger truffles (2 euros). Steaming glasses of Moroccan mint tea round it all out. Reservations recommended.

4pm | Take a stroll

Valencia is packed with parks and gardens, often clustered together in a verdant urban patchwork. Among the most overlooked by visitors (but not locals) are the University of Valencia Botanical Gardens (3 euros) with some 4,500 distinct species of plants spread among themed gardens from different climates and continents. Prefer to stroll indoors? Nearby is one of Spain’s first and most respected modern art museums, the Institut Valencia d’Art Modern, or IVAM (5 euros), with world-class exhibitions and a display of iconic works by Julio Gonzalez, an early master of modern sculpture who helped Picasso translate his ideas into three dimensions. Steps away is the Centro del Carme de Cultura Contemporanea (free), a bustling contemporary arts centre — exhibitions, concerts, children’s events — in a former convent centred on two gorgeous courtyards.

5.30pm | Cool off sweetly

Part of the legacy of 500 years of Moorish rule in Valencia is the cultivation of crops like rice (whence paella) and chufa (tiger nut in English, although it’s a tuber). Valencians soak the latter in water to make a subtly flavoured, creamy drink called horchata (orxata, in local parlance), which gets sweetened and iced and enjoyed with even sweeter sugar-glazed pastries called fartons. Daniel on Calle del Mar represents the beloved old-school horchata tradition. For hipster-cool, organic, bio, sugar-free horchata, try Suc de Lluna at the beautiful Art Nouveau Mercado de Colon, a grand former produce market converted to a food court. Valencia’s trade links with Italy also influenced the local sweet tooth, as evidenced by the gelaterias ringing the Plaza de la Reina. Heladeria Veneta features distinctive flavours like violet, turron (almond nougat) and a prizewinning one that translates as “grandmother’s cookies,” with bits of biscuit, chocolate and Nutella (two scoops; 5 euros).

6.30pm | Get contemporary

Centro de Arte Hortensia Herrero (10 euros) opened just over a year ago. Filling the 17th-century Palacio de Valeriola, the centre features works by some of the biggest names on the international contemporary art scene — Olafur Eliasson, David Hockney, Cristina Iglesias and Anselm Kiefer, among others. Herrero was one of Spain’s wealthiest patrons and spent seven years and 40 million euros restoring the building and commissioning many site-specific works. Sean Scully’s work in the palace’s former chapel features his signature broad stripes in saturated hues painted on glass covering the chapel windows so they glow. Tomas Saraceno’s “Corona Australis 38.89” also employs richly coloured glass, an apt medium for a city bathed in sunlight. For older art head to the Museo de Bellas Artes (free) for Renaissance altarpieces dripping in gold leaf and jewel-tone paint as well as a display of works by Valencia’s most famous artist, painter Joaquín Sorolla, known for his masterful depiction of light on lush fabrics and surfaces.

8.30pm | Hit the boulevard

Calle Conde de Altea has become one of the city’s liveliest nightlife hubs. Start with a glass of natural wine and a gilda, a favourite pintxo (skewer) with olives, anchovy filets, and small pickled green peppers, named after Rita Hayworth’s character in the movie of the same name, at Dentro Natural Wine Bar. For dinner, try La Lambrusqueria (advance reservation recommended) which, true to its name, bubbles over every weekend. More than 30 years ago, Italian emigre Toni Campagnolo opened his first pizzeria across the street and now occupies several adjacent storefronts. Specialties include warmed scamorzza (smoked mozzarella) scooped up with bread, beef carpaccio “alla Monagasca” (dusted with shavings of foie gras) or linguine with hefty langoustines bathed in zingy tomato sauce pizza. Dinner for two, 80 euros.

11.30pm | Cap the night

As the evening progresses, the festive energy around Conde de Altea keeps building. Maison Lupin offers a chic atmosphere for imbibing superbly made cocktails in fanciful ceramic drinking vessels. The bar’s namesake Arsene Lupin cocktail (vodka, lime and both watermelon syrup and watermelon juice) comes in a tall glass in the form of the elegant, monocle-wearing fictional gentleman thief created by the French author Maurice Leblanc in the early 1900s (cocktails, 12 euros). End the night at the casual vintage record shop and bar Splendini. For something physically higher up, try the rooftop terrace at Atenea Sky, overlooking the grand plaza.

SUNDAY

10am | Cycle Turia Garden

Ask Valencians what makes their city great and most will say, Turia Garden, Spain’s largest urban park, created when the Turia River was rerouted away from the city after devastating floods in 1957. At the park’s edge, Valencia Bikes can set you up (bike rentals, 15 euros for the day) to cycle Turia’s nearly six-mile-long green belt. Stops may include the safari-inspired Bioparc (18.90 euros), where zebras, giraffes and lions roam and the 14th-century Torres de Serranos, the remnants of Valencia’s imposing medieval walls. Don’t miss the 21st-century City of the Arts and the Sciences, a futuristic complex of opera house, science museum, exhibition spaces, and Oceanografic, one of Europe’s most spectacular aquariums.

1.30pm | Explore the Seaside

A seaside paella lunch is standard Sunday fare, and Casa Carmela delivers the goods. A traditional paella valenciana for two (48 euros; order when booking the table) features rice cooked with chicken, rabbit, duck, snails, artichokes and other vegetables over an open fire. End with a stroll on the beach in front. Or explore Cabanyal, a fishermen’s village between the city and the beach, which is becoming one of Valencia’s most vibrant dining and drinking destinations. Casa Montana is a wonderful vermouth and wine bar with a menu focused on local and seasonal seafood delicacies. The newcomer La Sastrería has a groovy tile-encrusted modern interior but an equal reverence for the sea’s bounty. Stretch the day with a stop at either Mercader Cabanyal or La Fabrica de Hielo, food and drink stalls with sporadic film screenings and music performances.

Andrew Ferren © The New York Times

This article originally appeared in The New York Times