Valencia in 2 days, on foot

This 2-day self-guided walking plan for Valencia covers 23 narrated sights in an easy day-by-day order. Each day is split into a morning and an afternoon loop, and every stop has a two to three minute audio story in the Gingerguide app.

You set the pace: this is a suggested order, not a schedule. Walk it in 2 days, or stretch it out. Reorder freely; Valencia rewards a detour.

Day 1

Morning

1. City of Arts and Sciences: Valencia's futuristic architectural masterpiece, a vast complex by Santiago Calatrava and Félix Candela housing a science museum, planetarium, oceanarium, and opera house, built in the former bed of the Turia River.
2. Valencia Cathedral: A Gothic cathedral begun in 1252 on the site of the main mosque, home to the Holy Grail, a first-century agate chalice identified by popes since the Middle Ages as the cup used by Christ at the Last Supper.
3. Mercado Central: One of the largest and most beautiful covered food markets in Europe, an Art Nouveau masterpiece completed in 1928 with 8,000 square metres of ironwork and stained glass housing over 300 stalls of fresh produce, seafood, and local specialities.
4. La Lonja de la Seda: A UNESCO World Heritage Gothic masterpiece completed in 1498, Valencia's Silk Exchange, one of the finest secular Gothic buildings in Europe, where the merchants of Renaissance Valencia conducted the silk trade that made the city prosperous.
5. Jardines del Turia: A nine-kilometre linear park running through the heart of Valencia in the former bed of the Turia River, the longest urban garden in Spain, with Gulliver's playground, sports fields, and walking paths connecting every major district of the city.
6. Barrio del Carmen: Valencia's oldest and most bohemian neighbourhood, a tangle of medieval streets between the Roman wall and the Gothic city wall, home to street art, tapas bars, alternative galleries, and the most vibrant nightlife in the city.

Afternoon

1. Malvarrosa Beach: The city beach of Valencia, a long urban promenade beach just 20 minutes from the old town, where Valencians have swum, eaten paella in the beachfront restaurants, and celebrated Las Fallas for generations.
2. Museo de Bellas Artes: One of the most important fine art museums in Spain, housed in a former seminary beside the Turia gardens, with an outstanding collection of Valencian Gothic painting, Spanish Golden Age masters, and the largest collection of Joaquín Sorolla outside Madrid.
3. Oceanogràfic: Europe's largest aquarium, a spectacular complex of ten pavilions by architect Félix Candela housing 45,000 animals from 500 species in habitats representing the world's major marine ecosystems, from the Mediterranean to the Arctic.
4. Albufera Natural Park: A vast coastal lagoon and wetland 10km south of Valencia, the birthplace of paella, home to over 250 bird species, and one of the most important freshwater ecosystems in the western Mediterranean, threatened by urban development and agriculture.
5. El Cabanyal: Valencia's historic fishermen's neighbourhood beside the sea, a unique grid of 19th-century neo-Mudéjar houses with colourful ceramic tile facades, saved from demolition in 2010 and now one of the most creative and colourful urban areas in Valencia.
6. IVAM: The Institut Valencià d'Art Modern, one of Spain's leading contemporary art museums, founded in 1989 beside the old city walls, with outstanding permanent collections of 20th-century Spanish art and major international temporary exhibitions.

Day 2

Morning

1. Torres de Quart: The massive 15th-century western gate towers of Valencia's old city wall, one of the best-preserved examples of Gothic military architecture in Spain, still bearing visible cannon ball damage from Napoleon's siege of 1808.
2. Mercado de Colón: A stunning 1916 Modernisme market hall, Valencia's most beautiful iron and ceramics building, now transformed into a food market and café complex where locals come for morning horchata, fresh produce, and one of the finest covered urban spaces in Spain.
3. Bioparc Valencia: An innovative zoological park designed around the concept of immersion, African ecosystems recreated without visible barriers so that visitors share the same space as meerkats, gorillas, hippos, and elephants in a groundbreaking model of modern zoo design.
4. Torres de Serranos: The magnificent 14th-century Gothic north gate of Valencia, two soaring towers that served successively as a city gateway, a noble prison, and a safe haven for city archives; one of the finest surviving examples of civic Gothic architecture in Spain.
5. Plaza del Ayuntamiento: Valencia's grand civic heart, a monumental early 20th-century square flanked by the Neo-Baroque City Hall and the Central Post Office, the setting for the most spectacular Mascleta firecracker concerts of the Las Fallas festival and the city's most important ceremonies.
6. Basílica de la Virgen de los Desamparados: The 17th-century basilica housing Valencia's most venerated image, the Patroness of Valencia, an extraordinary late-medieval statue that attracts millions of pilgrims, and whose annual procession during Las Fallas is one of the most spectacular devotional events in Spain.

Afternoon

1. Museum of the Fallas: A unique collection of the 'ninots indultados', the single puppet figure from each year's Las Fallas festival that the public votes to save from burning, forming an irreplaceable visual archive of Valencia's most extraordinary cultural tradition.
2. Palacio del Marqués de Dos Aguas: Valencia's most extravagant building, an 18th-century palace with an extraordinary alabaster portal considered the most spectacular example of Churrigueresque decoration in Spain, now housing the National Museum of Ceramics.
3. L'Hemisfèric: The eye-shaped IMAX cinema and planetarium at the City of Arts and Sciences, Santiago Calatrava's most striking single building, designed to resemble a giant human eye reflected in surrounding water, with a hemispheric screen and regular astronomy shows.
4. Ruzafa: Valencia's most creative neighbourhood, a former working-class district south of the old city that has transformed into the most eclectic mix of independent cafés, restaurants, bars, galleries, and boutiques in Valencia, centred around the Mercado de Ruzafa.
5. Puente de la Trinidad: The oldest surviving bridge in Valencia, a graceful 15th-century Gothic stone bridge over the old Turia riverbed, now the main pedestrian crossing between the old city and the Turia Gardens, with fine views in both directions along the river park.

Full Valencia guide and all stops → · Other itineraries: 3 days