City of Arts and Sciences

A Cultural And Architectural Complex Built 1998 To 2009 Largely To Designs By Santiago Calatrava, In The Diverted Bed Of The Turia River, Including Europe'S Largest Aquarium · Valencia, Valencia

A complex of white concrete and broken-tile buildings standing in the bed of a river that is no longer there. Valencia flooded catastrophically in 1957, and the response was to divert the Turia around the city entirely and turn nine kilometres of dry riverbed into a linear park; the City of Arts and Sciences occupies its seaward end. Santiago Calatrava, who was born in Valencia, designed most of it between 1998 and 2009, and the forms are his signature: ribbed, skeletal, white, doubled in reflecting pools so that each building appears to sit on its own mirror image. There is a science museum shaped like a whale skeleton, an opera house that looks like a helmet, a planetarium like an eye that opens, and Europe's largest aquarium. The buildings are separately ticketed and the outside is free, which is how most people should use it: walk the pools at dusk, and pay only for whichever one you actually want.

Avenida del Professor Lopez Pinero 7, Valencia, Valencia, 46013, Spain

NO OPENING TIME HERE WAS CHECKED. The structure: THE OUTDOOR SITE, the plazas, the pools and L'Umbracle are public and open long hours with floodlighting after dark. EACH BUILDING KEEPS ITS OWN SEPARATE SCHEDULE: the Oceanografic runs longest in summer with much shorter winter hours, the science museum and L'Hemisferic have their own timings, and L'Hemisferic works on SCREENING TIMES rather than opening hours. The opera house runs a performance season. Confirm each separately.

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