Valencia

Valencia: From Oranges to Operas

By Bob Schulman

Valencia Spain - The City of Arts and Sciences

Is it a Martian spaceport? A movie set from Star Wars? An outdoor museum of modern art? Whatever it is, it's hardly a place you'd expect to run across in a two-thousand-year-old Spanish port on the Mediterranean.

Visitors to Valencia typically expect to find a town packed with museums and historic buildings from the days when it was ruled by Roman emperors, Visigoth princes, Moorish caliphs and Christian kings. And that's exactly what you'll see, including a cathedral displaying a chalice some believe to be the Holy Grail.

Valencia's big surprise is just a short cab ride from the historic district, down in a dried up riverbed. There, a mile-long wonderland pops into view, dazzling you with sights such as a towering opera house resembling a spaceship, an eye-shaped planetarium with 9,000 twinkling stars, and a glass sphere, part of an aquarium, soaring 85 feet in the air. What's more, the buildings' images are eerily doubled in reflecting pools running the length of the project.

All this was built over the past 10 years at a cost of more than a billion dollars (in euros), according to the Valencia Tourism & Convention Bureau. Today, the project -- called City of the Arts and Sciences -- is paying off to the tune of millions of visits a year.

City of Arts and Sciences Valencia Spain

Talk about strange bedfellows. The old riverbed winds through the center of Valencia for seven or so miles, mostly covered by lush parks, gardens, bike paths and nature walks. So how did this Spanish Shangri-La get a next door neighbor looking like the set of a science fiction movie.

About 15 years ago, the story goes, Valencia got serious about getting known for more than its namesake oranges. The big bucks came from tourism, and the town -- which at the time hardly showed up in the country's visitor count -- set out to grab its share.

To get in on the action, Valencians reportedly shelled out billions of dollars (in euros) on big-time tourism magnets such as a new super-port for cruise ships, a new convention center, a new airport terminal and -- their crown jewel -- the City of the Arts and Sciences, or CAS for short.

The CAS was beamed down in five sections.

First to debut (in 1998) was the eye-shaped L'Hemisferic, a theater in a 50-foot-high sphere under an oval roof as long as a football field. Inside, IMAX movies are shown on an immense screen that's also used in turning the sphere into a planetarium and as a stage for laser light shows.

Next (in 2000) came the Science Museum Principe Felipe. Resembling a giant ribcage, it's loaded with interactive high-tech exhibits -- everything from jet fighters to a DNA molecule rising up over 100 feet -- aimed at giving visitors a fun way to experience the workings of life, science and technology. The museum's motto is, "Touching is always permitted."

The project went to the fishes in 2003 with the debut of Oceanografico, Europe's largest aquarium. Here, visitors journey through the world's seas and oceans on paths taking them through glass underwater tunnels, pod-like viewing structures and a sphere as high as an eight-story building. All told, the area is home to some 45,000 denizens of the deep, from little moonfish to beluga whales.

The latest addition is the Palau de les Arts Reina Sofia, opened in 2006 at a cost of a half-billion dollars. Shaped like a spaceship on a launch pad -- some say it looks more like a bicycle racing helmet -- the 230-foot-high structure houses four auditoriums including a state-of-the-art opera house seating 1,700. Among innovations, the performers' words are translated (in your choice of seven languages) on a seatback screen in front of you.

Visitors enter the CAS by walking down a palm-tree-lined promenade a quarter of a mile long. Towering above them is an arched, see-through ceiling six stories high, offering a taste of the wonders of the four main sections of the project.

Mostly designed by Valencia's famous hometown architect Santiago Calatrava, the CAS played a key role in putting Valencia on the tourism map. Coupled with the harbor program and aggressive marketing, it also helped lure the prestigious America's Cup yacht race to Valencia last summer, producing worldwide publicity for the town. Plans are in the mill to again hold the event here.

Another tourism magnet is what local officials call "an endless stream of cultural and leisure events." Currently, for example, art lovers are lining up to see an exhibit of 14 paintings by another native Valencian, the legendary artist Joaquin Sorolla. Until now adorning the walls of a library in New York, the paintings will be on display at Valencia's new Bancaja Cultural Center until March 31.

Meanwhile, back in the old riverbed there's another strange bedfellow about to share the covers. Coming from a site about the size of eight city blocks will be whinnies, bellows, growls and roars from Biopark, a $75 million cageless zoo set to debut in early 2008. Here, visitors will walk along paths separated from the animals by strategically placed streams, boulders, up-ended tree trunks and towering palms. In some places, we'll be able to check out the animals (and vice versa) up close on glass-sided walkways.

The first section of the zoo will recreate African locales in which 4,000 animals from aardvarks to zebras will appear to roam freely. Visitors, it's said, will experience "moments of emotion" as we wander around, such as spotting herds of giraffes or elephants while lions look on from rocky heights.

And there's more on the drawing board. Two future sections will feature locales and animals from Southeast Asia and the tropics.

Travel Tips

Getting to Valencia usually requires two flight connections along the way, one at a U.S. international gateway and the second at Spain's air hub at Madrid. From there, it's a 55-minute jet hop to Valencia.

Transatlantic airlines such as Iberia typically leave the U.S. in the late afternoon and arrive in Spain the next morning. After checking in at their hotels in Valencia -- there's some three dozen five- and four-star hotels to pick from -- veteran travelers often head to spas to wind down from the long trip. Some hotels, like the 135-room Westin (a five-star property), have their own spas.

Others opt to soak in the bubbling waters of a thermal spa at the Balneario TermaEuropa La Alameda across the street from the Westin.

Coming back, savvy travelers break up the trip by stopping over in Madrid for a day or two. Around 100 tourist-class hotels are available there. Several, such as the hip-deco De Las Letras (103 rooms), are clustered in the popular Gran Via section of the city, within walking distance of the Prado Museum and other major landmarks.

Westbound flights across the Atlantic typically touch down in the U.S. in mid-afternoon, giving travelers time to catch connecting flights to their local airports.

For more information, visit the Valencia Tourism and Convention Bureau at www.turisvalencia.es or the Tourist Office of Spain at www.spain.info and www.okspain.org. The latter agency has North American offices in Chicago, Los Angeles, Miami, New York and Toronto.

Valencia

Valencia: From Oranges to Operas

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