Plan a first Valencia trip with kids around these. They're the places we'd take visiting family first, picked because they hold a kid's attention and not only an adult's. The old riverbed is now a car-free park that runs right across the city, so a lot of a family day here can happen by bike. Here's what we checked, from the Oceanogràfic to the Fallas Museum.
Oceanogràfic is an aquarium spread across separate buildings in the City of Arts and Sciences, each recreating a marine ecosystem, from the Mediterranean to the Arctic. Kids walk through an underwater tunnel with sharks overhead (the park calls it Europe's longest), see Spain's only beluga whales, and watch the dolphin show.
A 4D cinema, a touch pool and a sea turtle rescue center are paid extras on top of entry.
The Museu de les Ciències fills Santiago Calatrava's long glass-ribbed hall at the City of Arts and Sciences with hands-on science. Kids walk through a forest of giant chromosomes, dance with their own on-screen avatars in the Bailar! exhibit, and join live demonstrations at the Science Theater.
Younger kids head for the Espai dels Xiquets, a play zone with mirrors, real animals and a toy building site to put together.
Santiago Calatrava designed this building as a giant eye. Inside is a spherical theater with a 900 m² concave screen and just over 300 seats, showing IMAX and fulldome films about space, dinosaurs and the natural world, some of them in 3D.
Two large pools around the shell reflect it to complete the eye shape. It sits at the heart of the City of Arts and Sciences, a short walk from the science museum.
Bioparc Valencia recreates four African landscapes: the savanna, the equatorial rainforest, the Kitum cave wetlands and the island of Madagascar. The habitats have no visible bars, so elephants, giraffes, gorillas and lions appear in open scenery. In the wetlands, kids watch hippos underwater, a view found nowhere else in Spain. On Madagascar, six lemur species roam free around the path. Keeper talks run through the day, included with entry.
The Turia Gardens fill the old bed of the River Turia, diverted after the 1957 floods, with over nine kilometers of flat paths, lawns and pines from Parque de Cabecera to the City of Arts and Sciences.
Kids can bike or scoot far from traffic, climb the giant Gulliver playground, ride a swan boat on the Cabecera lake, and kick a ball on the sports fields. Eighteen bridges cross overhead.
A giant Gulliver, almost 70 meters long and 9 meters high, lies tied to the ground in the Turia Garden, the park that runs along the old riverbed. Kids play the Lilliputians, climbing his body by stairs, ramps and ropes and racing down fast slides.
Accessible ramps lead onto the playground, and the lawns around it suit a picnic. Benches shaped like reclining figures and vending machines round it out.
A covered market from 1928, built of iron, glass and painted tile, with about 260 stalls of fruit, vegetables, fish, meat and bread. The central dome rises 30 meters, and weathervanes shaped like a parrot and a fish crown the domes.
Kids can point out unfamiliar fruit, watch the fishmongers at work and pick a snack from one of the dozen stalls selling ready-to-eat food.
Malvarrosa is the northern stretch of the city beach, a wide band of fine golden sand that runs into Cabanyal Beach to the south with no clear line and ends at the Alboraia border. Walkways and ramps run down to the shore.
About 200 m out, at the edge of the buoyed swimming zone, sits Spain's first artificial reef, a spot for confident adult snorkelers and divers. Water sports use a marked channel.
Traditional flat-bottomed boats called albuferencs leave the pier at El Palmar, a fishing village of thatched barracas and canals, for rides of about 40 minutes across Spain's largest freshwater lake. The route crosses marshland and rice fields where herons, cormorants and ducks feed. Afterward, eat paella in the village where the dish was born.
Parc Central covers the old railway land behind Estació del Nord, where the tracks now run underground. Landscape architect Kathryn Gustafson designed its water channels, lawns, flower beds and a garden inspired by the Valencian huerta. Kids head for the children's garden, with a climbing wall and water play. Restored railway sheds by Demetrio Ribes hold cultural spaces, including Ribes Espai Cultural, which stages theater and puppet shows.
The Viveros gardens hold 2,769 trees of 167 species, laid out as romantic flower beds in the south, wilder landscaped areas in the north, and a rose garden.
Inside the gates kids find a large playground, a mini road circuit used for road-safety lessons with a skating track around it, the Natural Science Museum, and the ruins of the Royal Palace with a small interpretation center.
The Fallas Museum fills a former convent with the ninots indultats: the papier-mâché figures pardoned from the bonfire by public vote every year since 1934. Two are saved each year now, one from a main falla and one from a children's falla.
Kids can get close to decades of comic and satirical figures and see how the style changed, then browse Fallas posters, old photos and the sashes worn by each Fallera Mayor.
Plan a first Valencia trip with kids around these. They're the places we'd take visiting family first, picked because they hold a kid's attention and not only an adult's. The old riverbed is now a car-free park that runs right across the city, so a lot of a family day here can happen by bike. Here's what we checked, from the Oceanogràfic to the Fallas Museum.
Oceanogràfic is an aquarium spread across separate buildings in the City of Arts and Sciences, each recreating a marine ecosystem, from the Mediterranean to the Arctic. Kids walk through an underwater tunnel with sharks overhead (the park calls it Europe's longest), see Spain's only beluga whales, and watch the dolphin show.
A 4D cinema, a touch pool and a sea turtle rescue center are paid extras on top of entry.
The Museu de les Ciències fills Santiago Calatrava's long glass-ribbed hall at the City of Arts and Sciences with hands-on science. Kids walk through a forest of giant chromosomes, dance with their own on-screen avatars in the Bailar! exhibit, and join live demonstrations at the Science Theater.
Younger kids head for the Espai dels Xiquets, a play zone with mirrors, real animals and a toy building site to put together.
Santiago Calatrava designed this building as a giant eye. Inside is a spherical theater with a 900 m² concave screen and just over 300 seats, showing IMAX and fulldome films about space, dinosaurs and the natural world, some of them in 3D.
Two large pools around the shell reflect it to complete the eye shape. It sits at the heart of the City of Arts and Sciences, a short walk from the science museum.
Bioparc Valencia recreates four African landscapes: the savanna, the equatorial rainforest, the Kitum cave wetlands and the island of Madagascar. The habitats have no visible bars, so elephants, giraffes, gorillas and lions appear in open scenery. In the wetlands, kids watch hippos underwater, a view found nowhere else in Spain. On Madagascar, six lemur species roam free around the path. Keeper talks run through the day, included with entry.
The Turia Gardens fill the old bed of the River Turia, diverted after the 1957 floods, with over nine kilometers of flat paths, lawns and pines from Parque de Cabecera to the City of Arts and Sciences.
Kids can bike or scoot far from traffic, climb the giant Gulliver playground, ride a swan boat on the Cabecera lake, and kick a ball on the sports fields. Eighteen bridges cross overhead.
A giant Gulliver, almost 70 meters long and 9 meters high, lies tied to the ground in the Turia Garden, the park that runs along the old riverbed. Kids play the Lilliputians, climbing his body by stairs, ramps and ropes and racing down fast slides.
Accessible ramps lead onto the playground, and the lawns around it suit a picnic. Benches shaped like reclining figures and vending machines round it out.
A covered market from 1928, built of iron, glass and painted tile, with about 260 stalls of fruit, vegetables, fish, meat and bread. The central dome rises 30 meters, and weathervanes shaped like a parrot and a fish crown the domes.
Kids can point out unfamiliar fruit, watch the fishmongers at work and pick a snack from one of the dozen stalls selling ready-to-eat food.
Malvarrosa is the northern stretch of the city beach, a wide band of fine golden sand that runs into Cabanyal Beach to the south with no clear line and ends at the Alboraia border. Walkways and ramps run down to the shore.
About 200 m out, at the edge of the buoyed swimming zone, sits Spain's first artificial reef, a spot for confident adult snorkelers and divers. Water sports use a marked channel.
Traditional flat-bottomed boats called albuferencs leave the pier at El Palmar, a fishing village of thatched barracas and canals, for rides of about 40 minutes across Spain's largest freshwater lake. The route crosses marshland and rice fields where herons, cormorants and ducks feed. Afterward, eat paella in the village where the dish was born.
Parc Central covers the old railway land behind Estació del Nord, where the tracks now run underground. Landscape architect Kathryn Gustafson designed its water channels, lawns, flower beds and a garden inspired by the Valencian huerta. Kids head for the children's garden, with a climbing wall and water play. Restored railway sheds by Demetrio Ribes hold cultural spaces, including Ribes Espai Cultural, which stages theater and puppet shows.
The Viveros gardens hold 2,769 trees of 167 species, laid out as romantic flower beds in the south, wilder landscaped areas in the north, and a rose garden.
Inside the gates kids find a large playground, a mini road circuit used for road-safety lessons with a skating track around it, the Natural Science Museum, and the ruins of the Royal Palace with a small interpretation center.
The Fallas Museum fills a former convent with the ninots indultats: the papier-mâché figures pardoned from the bonfire by public vote every year since 1934. Two are saved each year now, one from a main falla and one from a children's falla.
Kids can get close to decades of comic and satirical figures and see how the style changed, then browse Fallas posters, old photos and the sashes worn by each Fallera Mayor.
