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Valencia

The arms of the City of Valencia with two L's (twice loyal) set in flowers in the park that today is where the river once flowed through the town, and caused floods now and then. A ten-kilometre park, for you to walk along and have a good time in the sunshine.

Contents

Science Museum   The Eye   Space Ship Dock

The Cathedral   Interior   The Side Chapels

Goodies Church Goin' Downtown

Valencia may not be the ultimate in architecture, though. You just don't feel like jumping from architectural joy, traversing the streets of the city, until you get to the...

Science Museum    Like a creature that once lived, an extinct dinosaur with its spine sticking up, or something else ex living, organic, there it lays, the Science Museum (Museo de las Ciencias). The building is more fantastic than everything I have ever seen before, both from the out- and inside, like an archaeologist's feverish dreams.    The pictures of its exterior need no further explanations, just muse with the loveliness. As you might see, the house is made out of concrete prefabs cast somewhere else and assembled on site. The cracks are visible.    A giant DNA molecule in steel and glass catches your eye on the bottom floor, along with a Focault's Pendulum. The wall not resembling a spine, instead looks like a lot of ribs. One might ponder over who will clean all the windows.

The Eye    In the middle of a pool beside the spine, lies a giant eye. Someone has played too much Riven again. There are plants growing out of holes in the water and the globe in the middle houses an IMAX cinema that seems to be floating on water. The "eyelid" can be raised, so as to "open" the eye. When darkness falls, the scenery turns into something more fantastic. It's even better when the night sky is the only illumination, before all the lighting comes on.

Space Ship Dock    On the other side of the street they are building the NCC 1710 Enterprise space ship from Star Trek. You do recognise the engine bay? But when it's finished it will look different. Then, everything will be covered in a hemispherical sail, as in the model picture. There will be two cinemas and lots of exhibition space. It will look more like a spaceport than a space ship then. At present, in the evening light, it definitely has some Science Fiction about it.

The Cathedral   The Cathedral is a strange mixture of different styles, baroque, renaissance, gothic and some bullfight arena. The portal facing the main square is a beautiful baroque creation, but it is squeezed in between buildings of later date, to the point that it more or less disappears and looks out of place. It can only be viewed in earnest on a picture like this. The portal in the other end is a marvellous gothic pointed arch door, but the building is cut off right above it, snip - snip. I guess this church took many hundred years to build, and the contributions from the various centennia weren't always a boon.

Interior   Inside it's quite magnificent. The altar, for example, is not bad.   This church has no glass windows. Instead they are made from alabaster, very thin marble. It gives an eerie and beautiful effect. It also makes the church quite dark and mysterious.

The Side Chapels  Ï There are small side chapels on a row along the walls. I've never seen so many at one time. Fiest your eyes. There are works by Goya there, too. His portraits of the Borgia family.     One of the most remarkable is what I call "The Chapel of the Holy Stick-o-Dynamite" Just look, there it sits in the middle of the altar-piece with the fuse lit up. See how it sparks. And there's smoke too.

Goodies Church
	Right next to a big candy store this church can be found, the St. Lawrence. It's a candy in itself.

Goin' Downtown
	There are some amazing things to look at in the city as well, like this bridge for example: Puente de la Exposición. It's some sort of rib cage, too.
	The Museum of Arts looked very much like any other art museum, if it wasn't for the dome, like a wonderful indoor blue sky. It was blue on the outside, too.
	The gates to National Museum of Ceramics (Museo Nacional de Cerámica) are the most fantastic I have ever seen, like a ceramic world. The guardsman at the door was kind enough to back off inside as I took the picture, but he needn't have bothered. I erased him completely.
	This lounge, Lonja de los Mercadores, with its unusual, threaded pillars, was built sometime during the mediaeval ages, for the grain dealers to sit and decide on the grain prices. It was also used as a water-rights court. Each farmer had his own desk, with his name on.
	The neighbouring market-hall was a piece of art in itself, with its domes and projections, but as the sun was at a bad angle, so I decided to image one of the towers instead.
	The TV transmitters are very far apart in Spain it seems. The TV antennae on the rooftops in town have grown to grotesque proportions. This one was probably the highest, far higher than the house on which it sat. And when it storms? Perhaps cable TV would be an alternative?
	Let us finish off with a picture of how the ordinary Valencia city-dwellers live. This is the interiors of a round back yard, The Redonda, also housing a round market-hall.

Valencia played an important part in the civil war against Franco in the 70'ies, acting as alternate capital. Since 1978 the country is democratic and all memorabilia and statues of the old dictator has been removed, except in the military headquarters, where they still have a copy of their old buddy, the only one left in the city.

Finally, a little travel picture snapped on the way home.

Bye, bye Valencia!