The Most Beautiful Places in the Valencian Community
5 places · updated 13 October 2026
In short: By our ranking, the most beautiful places in the Valencian Community are L'Oceanogràfic, Museu de les Ciències Príncipe Felipe and Palau de les Arts Reina Sofía. The list covers 5 places. Last updated 13 October 2026.
The Valencian Community follows the Mediterranean coast of eastern Spain, a fertile strip of orchards, rice fields and orange groves backed by dry mountains. Its capital, Valencia, grew rich in the fifteenth century on silk and trade, and has kept a taste for bold building ever since. When the River Turia was diverted after a catastrophic flood in 1957, the old riverbed became a long green park, and at its end the city commissioned a new quarter of white concrete and glass.
That quarter, the City of Arts and Sciences, was designed largely by Santiago Calatrava, a Valencian, and fills most of the places here. L'Hemisfèric, shaped like a giant eye whose lid opens over a reflecting pool, houses a planetarium and large-format cinema. The Museu de les Ciències Príncipe Felipe stretches along the water like the skeleton of an enormous animal, and the Palau de les Arts Reina Sofía, an opera house, is crowned by a sweeping metal shell. L'Oceanogràfic, among the largest aquariums in Europe, has roofs by the engineer Félix Candela that curve like the waves they shelter.
The old city answers with the Lonja de la Seda, the silk exchange built at the end of the fifteenth century. Its trading hall is a masterpiece of late Gothic civil architecture, with spiral columns that rise like palm trunks into a ribbed vault, five centuries before Calatrava worked with similar forms.
In this list
| # | Place | Type | UNESCO |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | L'Oceanogràfic | Public aquarium | |
| 2 | Museu de les Ciències Príncipe Felipe | Science museum | |
| 3 | Palau de les Arts Reina Sofía | Opera house | |
| 4 | Lonja de la Seda | Palace | |
| 5 | L'Hemisfèric | Planetarium |
01 L'Oceanogràfic
Oceanográfico
Spain · 6 km from Valencia39.453° N 0.348° W
Diliff · CC BY-SA 3.0 The Oceanogràfic is an aquarium that is worth seeing before you look into a single tank.
Did you know? Its seawater is pumped from Valencia's Malvarrosa beach through about 25 kilometres of pipes.
02 Museu de les Ciències Príncipe Felipe
Museo de las Ciencias Príncipe Felipe
Spain · 5.5 km from Valencia39.456° N 0.352° W
Image by Tumisu from Pixabay The Museu de les Ciències Príncipe Felipe is the long white skeleton that seems to lie beached in the old bed of the Turia in Valencia.
Did you know? Construction began around 1994 and cost some 26 billion pesetas, built by a joint venture of the contractors FCC and Necso.
03 Palau de les Arts Reina Sofía
Palacio de las Artes Reina Sofía
Spain · 5.1 km from Valencia39.458° N 0.356° W
Image by AMDUMA from Pixabay The Palau de les Arts Reina Sofía looks less like a theatre than a giant white creature resting in a garden of water. Santiago Calatrava designed it as the final great piece of the City of Arts and Sciences, the chain of futuristic buildings laid out along the old bed of the Turia.
Did you know? The second large hall sits directly above the main auditorium and is equipped to project live video of performances taking place in the halls below.
04 Lonja de la Seda
Spain · 2.5 km from Valencia39.474° N 0.378° W
Juan Mayordomo · CC BY-SA 4.0 Eight slender columns twist upward like ropes of stone and, at about 11 m, open into ribbed vaults that cover the great trading hall of Valencia's Silk Exchange some 17 m above the floor.
Did you know? A small chapel at the foot of the tower, built in 1484 to 1486, has a star vault whose keystones carry the symbols of the four Evangelists.
05 L'Hemisfèric
Spain · 5.3 km from Valencia39.457° N 0.354° W
Diliff · CC BY 2.5 Valencia moved its river after a catastrophic flood in 1957 and turned the dry bed of the Turia into a long sunken park that curls around the old town. At its southeastern end, Santiago Calatrava built the City of Arts and Sciences, and L'Hemisfèric was its first building, opened on 16 April 1998.
Did you know? Work on the City of Arts and Sciences began in July 1996, and L'Hemisfèric opened less than two years later as the first finished building.
How this list is ranked
Places are chosen for how they look, not for how famous they are: each one has its own description and a photograph credited to its author. The order is a single world ranking that weighs the beauty of the place in curated photography together with how widely it is documented — the number of language editions of its encyclopedia article and how often that article is read in a year. The list is rebuilt as places are added, so the order and the counts on this page are always current.
Questions people ask
- What are the most beautiful places in the Valencian Community?
- On our list, L'Oceanogràfic ranks first, followed by Museu de les Ciències Príncipe Felipe and Palau de les Arts Reina Sofía.
- Why is the City of Arts and Sciences built in a riverbed?
- After the River Turia flooded Valencia in 1957, it was diverted south of the city. The empty bed was turned into the Turia Gardens, and the City of Arts and Sciences was built at their eastern end from the 1990s onward.
- Who designed the City of Arts and Sciences?
- Most of the complex is the work of the Valencian architect Santiago Calatrava. The Oceanogràfic is the exception: its shell roofs were designed by the engineer Félix Candela.
- What is the Lonja de la Seda?
- It is the old silk exchange of Valencia, built between 1482 and 1533 and listed by UNESCO in 1996. Its Hall of Columns is one of the finest secular Gothic interiors in Europe.
- What kinds of places are there to see in the Valencian Community?
- In our collection, the places in the Valencian Community are most often zoos (1), aquariums (1), palaces (1) and opera houses (1).
- How many places are on this list in the Valencian Community?
- The list covers 5 places.