Ciutat Vella (Valencia) Travel Guide - Free

Valentia was founded by the Romans in 138 BC on an island-like position near the Turia River, and archaeological evidence places parts of the early settlement within today’s Ciutat Vella. The Almoina Archaeological Centre preserves remains from the Roman, Visigothic and Islamic periods, including streets, foundations and public infrastructure. Although the ancient city occupied only part of the modern historic centre, its location established the urban focus around which Valencia continued to develop. Later building layers did not erase this early settlement so much as cover and reshape it, leaving the neighbourhood with one of the city’s clearest archaeological records.

Under Islamic rule, the city was known as Balansiya and grew within a defended urban settlement whose street pattern influenced the irregular lanes still visible in parts of Ciutat Vella. In 1238, James I of Aragon conquered Valencia, after which Christian institutions, parish churches and new administrative structures transformed the centre. The Cathedral developed on the site of earlier religious buildings, while the neighbouring La Seu and La Xerea quarters became closely associated with ecclesiastical and elite urban life. The change was not simply architectural: property, language, religion and civic power were reorganised across the old city.

Valencia’s commercial expansion during the late Middle Ages shaped the districts now known as El Mercat and Sant Francesc. The Lonja de la Seda, built mainly between the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, expresses the importance of merchants, contracts and the silk trade to the city’s economy. Nearby market activity developed around the Mercat quarter, while churches, civic offices and private residences filled the dense urban fabric. Wealth from commerce supported substantial Gothic and early modern construction, giving Ciutat Vella a concentration of buildings that still conveys Valencia’s role as a Mediterranean trading city.

The demolition of Valencia’s medieval walls in the nineteenth century opened the historic centre to new roads, squares and expansion beyond the old perimeter. This altered the relationship between Ciutat Vella and the growing city, particularly around Sant Francesc and the modern civic centre. Religious buildings were affected by nineteenth-century political changes, while new institutions, shops and administrative uses occupied older premises. In the twentieth century, parts of El Carme and other central quarters experienced decline, conservation and successive waves of rehabilitation. Recent renewal has brought cultural venues, restaurants and housing investment, while debates about tourism and resident life continue to influence the old centre.