- A handsome, vibrant city on the Mediterranean seaboard, excellent for its variety of art and architecture, good food and wine.
- The lecturer is Adam Hopkins, journalist and author, specialist in Spanish history and culture.
- Gothic highlights include the Silk Exchange and Royal Chapel at Santo Domingo.
- Possibility of attending an opera or concert at Calatrava’s striking Palau de les Arts Reina Sofia.
- One of Spain’s greatest fine arts museums, and its first modern art gallery, Impressionist collections and Arabic ceramics.
INTRODUCTION
Valencia
Valencia, Spain’s third city, is elegant and open-spirited, filled with Mediterranean light – though you only glimpse the sea when you go down to the beach to sample a paella, Valencia’s great contribution to gastronomic pleasure. From Arab times until today, Valencia has meant and still means rice – and oranges. Valencia’s architecture reflects the city’s exuberant success in Gothic days and the newly-thrusting, ultra-modern regionalism which has brought the America’s Cup here twice in recent years. Santiago Calatrava’s vast, fantastical and gleaming showpiece, the City of Arts and Sciences, set in the bed of a diverted river as the culmination of fourteen kilometres of park, is undoubtedly its supreme expression.
Calatrava, Valencian-born engineer-architect supreme, has always had his critics: today voices are raised about operating cost and maintenance now rising to crisis level, and the general sense of grandeur. But few could deny the beauty of the cascading glass, the gleaming steel and dazzling concrete, the acrobatic forms of his assemblage of outsize buildings – opera house, science museum, sports stadium, arboretum-walkway along with an oceanarium by the older but also interesting architect Felix Candela. The complex and indeed the whole city should not be missed by anyone who wants an overview of modern Spain.
Evidence of the vigour of the city’s culture over the centuries is everywhere. The Fine Arts Museum is one of the most important in Spain, excellent in particular for Gothic and Renaissance painting – Valencia was Spain’s first port of call for many Renaissance ideas. The city’s luminous nineteenth-century painting, increasingly appreciated today, is also much in evidence. The IVAM was Spain’s first major gallery of modern art with an impressive permanent collection and important temporary exhibitions. The presence of the National Ceramics Museum, in a lush rococo palace, reflects continuous production of top-class ceramics from the thirteenth century onwards – Moorish in technique and design, its best elements perpetuated in what came after.
The Moors made mediaeval Valencia. Christians from Aragón reconquered it in 1238. The new masters built on Arab civilisation to achieve Mediterranean prominence and their own Gothic splendours. In an exuberant nineteenth-century city-centre, Art Nouveau (Modernista) and Art Deco flourished, as Santiago Calatrava does today in the Turia riverbed.
Calatrava, Valencian-born engineer-architect supreme, has always had his critics: today voices are raised about operating cost and maintenance now rising to crisis level, and the general sense of grandeur. But few could deny the beauty of the cascading glass, the gleaming steel and dazzling concrete, the acrobatic forms of his assemblage of outsize buildings – opera house, science museum, sports stadium, arboretum-walkway along with an oceanarium by the older but also interesting architect Felix Candela. The complex and indeed the whole city should not be missed by anyone who wants an overview of modern Spain.
Evidence of the vigour of the city’s culture over the centuries is everywhere. The Fine Arts Museum is one of the most important in Spain, excellent in particular for Gothic and Renaissance painting – Valencia was Spain’s first port of call for many Renaissance ideas. The city’s luminous nineteenth-century painting, increasingly appreciated today, is also much in evidence. The IVAM was Spain’s first major gallery of modern art with an impressive permanent collection and important temporary exhibitions. The presence of the National Ceramics Museum, in a lush rococo palace, reflects continuous production of top-class ceramics from the thirteenth century onwards – Moorish in technique and design, its best elements perpetuated in what came after.
The Moors made mediaeval Valencia. Christians from Aragón reconquered it in 1238. The new masters built on Arab civilisation to achieve Mediterranean prominence and their own Gothic splendours. In an exuberant nineteenth-century city-centre, Art Nouveau (Modernista) and Art Deco flourished, as Santiago Calatrava does today in the Turia riverbed.
ITINERARY
DAY 1
Fly at c. 10.45am from London Heathrow to Madrid (Iberia) and connect on a flight to Valencia (Air Nostrum). Arrive in time for an introductory talk.
DAY 2
The cathedral, a curious mix of Romanesque, Gothic and Baroque, has a
splendid chapter house and paintings by Goya. Fine Modernista market – and produce. Great examples of secular 15th-cent. Gothic include the Silk Exchange with its magnificent hall of pillars and the Generalitat with a sequence of richly decorated rooms (subject to confirmation). Housed in its exuberantly Churrigueresque palace, the collections of the National Ceramics Museum range from Moorish lustre ware to Picasso.
splendid chapter house and paintings by Goya. Fine Modernista market – and produce. Great examples of secular 15th-cent. Gothic include the Silk Exchange with its magnificent hall of pillars and the Generalitat with a sequence of richly decorated rooms (subject to confirmation). Housed in its exuberantly Churrigueresque palace, the collections of the National Ceramics Museum range from Moorish lustre ware to Picasso.
DAY 3
The complex of the Colegio del Patriarca has a Renaissance courtyard and a museum with Flemish and Spanish paintings. The church of Corpus Cristi has 16th-cent. frescoes and a Last Supper by Ribalta. Santo Domingo, a Gothic friary, has a Royal Chapel with ribless vault and an outstanding 14th-cent. chapter house (visit by special arrangement). Cross the 16th-cent. Royal Bridge to the Fine Arts Museum, one of the best in Spain, with works by Valencian, Spanish and Flemish masters.
DAY 4
Drive via the Quart Towers, a massive 14th-cent. city gateway, to IVAM (Instituto Valenciano de Arte Moderno): a collection of international painting, sculpture and photography with good temporary exhibitions. The home and studio of the Benlliure family of Impressionist painters has a large art collection and a romantic garden. Drive to the seafront for a paella lunch overlooking the Mediterranean. Take an optional excursion to Manises, centre of ceramic production since Arab times, with an excellently presented ceramics museum.
DAY 5
Spanning the dry bed of the diverted River Turia is a Calatrava trademark, the ‘Peineta’ bridge, and, below it, a metro station he designed. Further along is his Ciudad de las Artes y las Ciencias consisting inter alia of an arboretum, a soaring edifice that houses the science museum and the nearby opera house (exteriors only). Catch the early afternoon flight to Madrid, and then a connection to London Heathrow, arriving at c. 5.15pm.
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