Things to do in Valencia

Valencia’s cathedral was founded in the thirteenth century, embracing an eclectic combination of architectural styles - apparently including Jewish iconography. It’s an exhausting climb up the tower, known as Miguelete, but the spectacular views of the city and its many blue-domed churches more than compensate.

It’s fine to admit that traipsing around the guidebook’s Top 10 museums is not your thing. If exploring back alleys and soaking up the atmosphere is more up your street, make for the maze-like Barrio del Carmen. Filled with old-style townhouses hosting stylish cafés, tapas bars and boutiques, it’s a vibrant neighbourhood to explore.

Valencia erupts in a blaze of colour and noise for the Fallas Festival in March. During the year, each barrio builds satirical caricatures or fallas - some as tall as buildings - that are ignited all at once, though there are daily firecracker displays too, and much more besides. Shrinking violets beware: the explosions are body shattering.

The enormous Central Market, a modernista iron, girder and glass structure built in 1928, is embellished with a collage of tiles and mosaics, and crowned with swordfish and parrot weather vanes. It’s one of the biggest markets in Europe - fitting for huerta country.

The Valencia Museum of Fine Arts has one of the best general collections in Spain, with works by Bosch, El Greco, Goya, Veláquez, Ribera and Ribalta, as well as large quantities of modern Valencian art.

Calling all wildlife fans: the Albufera National Park, just 12km south of Valencia, is a vast lagoon separated from the sea by a sandbank and surrounded by rice fields. Being one of the largest bodies of freshwater in Spain, it constitutes an important wetland, and attracts tens of thousands of migratory birds - a throng composed of 250 species.

More than any project, the breathtaking Ciudad de las Artes y las Ciencias museum, rising from the riverbed, symbolizes Valencia’s vision to establish itself as a prime tourist destination. The giant complex consists of a series of inspired futuristic edifices housing the Hemisfèric, Museo de las Ciencias, Parque Oceanográfico and Palau de les Arts Reina Sofía and L’Ágora. When you’re deciding what to do in Valencia, make sure this features on your list.

Inside yet another elaborate Baroque palace is the Museo Nacional de Cerámica, with a vast collection of ceramics from all over Spain, and particularly Valencia.

You can’t come to Valencia and not eat paella - the dish for which it is famed. While the city is the home of paella, the finest places to eat it are, in fact, either out of town, in Perellonet or El Palmar, or along the city beach - Paseo Neptuno is lined with small paella and marisco restaurants.

If you’re struggling to decide between a city break and a beach break, no problem - Valencia has both! The city fully redeveloped its beach in 2007, and one of the best things to do in Valencia is to hop on a bus or the metro and laze on it. Catch some rays on the soft sand of the breezy playas Malvarrosa and Cabaãl. The outdoor cafés, bars and clubs here are particularly popular in the summer months.