Ruzafa Street – La Llotja

Very close to the beginning of the commercial area of the center par excellence, located on Calle Colón, we find the Plaza de Toros de Valencia, monument of the nineteenth century inaugurated in 1859. This bullring has also hosted over the years countless other activities, shows and sports. We start our route at this point, declared a Historic-Artistic Monument in 1983, which was built right next to one of the old gates of the wall, the Ruzafa Gate.

A few meters from the Plaza de Toros, is the Estación del Norte, built in 1917. It was designed a few years earlier by Demetrio Ribes, one of the great names of Valencian architecture of the twentieth century. In this centenary monument different architectural currents converge, for example regionalism and eclecticism, although it is also a clear example of modernist architecture, in which the influence of the Austrian school and Otto Wagner and the Secession movement is recognized. Undoubtedly, one of the most representative buildings of the civil architecture of the city, a must-see. A place with a lot of charm, of great artistic value, a point of constant movement of travelers and suitcases.

To reach our next destination we have to walk through the Plaza del Ayuntamiento and enter the historic center. Just 5 minutes walk we find the Central Market, a spectacular modernist building of the early twentieth century. Today it brings together more than 300 traders daily in the largest area in Europe dedicated to the sale of fresh products.

We finish the tour very close to the Market, with another jewel of our heritage: the Silk Exchange of Valencia, also known as the Merchants’ Exchange, recognized by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site, is the reference work of Valencian civil Gothic, a rich vestige of the medieval past of the city.

We start our itinerary in the Town Hall building, located in the square of the same name, which houses the main municipal political representatives. It is integrated in the Town Hall of the city of Valencia, which was built on the old House of Education, building of the eighteenth century, to which extensions and modifications were applied in the early twentieth century. Currently the City Council extends through an area of more than 6,000 square meters with facades that overlook four streets.

Just in front of the City Hall we find another of the most popular places in the city. The Post Office Building or Palacio de Correos y Telegrafos de Valencia is located in the Plaza del Ayuntamiento. A building whose construction was completed in 1922, an example of the eclecticism of the time that stands out for its enormous tower and its beautiful interior glass dome. How many times has this place been used as a meeting point. A classic among Valencians that “Let’s meet in the Post Office building”…

This varied itinerary culminates in the Teatre Principal. Just continue along the Plaza del Ayuntamiento and turn into Carrer de les Barques. In 3 minutes we will have arrived at this temple of Valencian culture, inaugurated in 1831, where the most important artistic events of theater, music and dance in the city have passed. Also noteworthy is its interior decoration in rococo style.

The origins of The Old Church of Sant Andrés, which has its main entrance on Calle Poeta Querol, must be traced to the time of the Conquest of Valencia by James I. Built on an old mosque, later, at the beginning of the seventeenth century the temple of Gothic origin was rebuilt in Baroque style. At the end of the Civil War the parish of San Andrés moved to Calle Colón and this church was renamed San Juan de la Cruz. Restored already in the XXI century, highlights the rococo decoration that we find inside the temple.

Nearby, less than a minute’s walk towards Calle de la Paz, we arrive at the Palace of the Marquis of Dosaigües, the greatest exponent of the Rococo style in Valencia, which was the product of the reform begun around 1740 in an old Gothic-style manor house. It is believed that the building stands on a Roman necropolis from the first to the third centuries AD. Today it houses on its second floor the González Martí National Museum of Ceramics, dedicated to the conservation, research and dissemination of ceramics, sumtuary and decorative arts.

Following Carrer Llibreters we arrive at the Royal College Seminary Corpus Christi, national historic-artistic monument that was completed in the seventeenth century, located on Calle de la Nao, in a building that occupies an entire block of buildings and integrates in its western area the Church of the Patriarch, whose cloister is an excellent example of Renaissance architecture.

Very close to the door of the church, continuing along Calle de la Nave, we find what many Valencians know as “the old university”. The building of La Nau, of neoclassical architecture, is the headquarters of the University of Valencia since it was founded in the fifteenth century. In the second half of the twentieth century the expansion of the University made the faculties move to new campuses, keeping in La Nau the institutional headquarters of the Rector’s Office, and an active Cultural Center with different spaces for the programming of exhibitions, theater, music…

Walking along Calle San Vicente Mártir from Plaza del Ayuntamiento in the direction of Plaza de la Reina, almost arriving, we find the Royal Parish of San Martín Obispo and San Antonio Abad. The construction of this church dates from the fourteenth century, integrating the Valencian Gothic and Baroque styles due to the successive reforms that have experienced both the façade and the temple.

Following our itinerary it is enough to continue straight towards the Plaza de la Reina and turn left to face one of the monuments most loved by the Valencians, the Church of Santa Catalina Màrtir. It was one of the founding parishes of the city at the time of the conquest of Valencia in the thirteenth century and subsequently underwent several remodeling, remaining as an architectural example of Mediterranean Gothic.

We continue our tour through the Plaza de la Reina. We will soon see at the other end the Cathedral of Valencia, another example of Valencian Gothic as a priority style, although the passage of the centuries has lent it Romanesque, Renaissance, Baroque and Neoclassical elements that cannot be ignored. The visitor can admire in its interior some of the best pictorial samples of the Quattrocento throughout the Iberian Peninsula. Right next to the main door rises majestically an indisputable icon of our city: the bell tower of the Micalet.

Our next destination is just 5 minutes away, strolling along Corretgeria and En Bou streets until you end up at the Central Market, crowned in the dome of the orchard area by its emblematic ” Market Parakeet”. This century-old market is a jewel of our modernist architecture and one of the largest spaces dedicated to the sale of fresh food goods in Europe.

In the same Plaza del Mercado is the Silk Exchange, an emblematic building of the fifteenth century, the Valencian Golden Age, an example of the Valencian late Gothic, which was built as a symbol of the commercial prosperity of the Valencia of the time. Pay attention to its impressive rooms and also to its rectangular facades, its medallions, sculptures and its characteristic gargoyles.

The third monument that completes this Market Square is the Church of Santos Juanes, also known as “La Sant Joan del Mercat”, located in front of the Lonja and next to the Market, another building of Valencian Gothic style originally, but of Baroque appearance due to subsequent reconstructions.