Valencia

3 days in Valencia, Spain -12/11/18 - 12/14/2018

From Barcelona we took a 3 hours train ride to Valencia. We checked in our hotel and we are now out and about to discover the city.

We are on Plaza de La Reina, straight ahead is the Valencia Cathedral located right in heart of Valencia and is considered to be one of the city's most famous architecture and religious landmarks. Valencia Cathedral officially known as the Metropolitan Cathedral Basilica of the Assumption of our Lady of Valencia is a Roman Catholic Cathedral.

El Micalet is the name of the cathedral's impressive bell tower which can be seen throughout the city.

Inside there is a spiral staircase with 207 steps that leads to a terrace area. From the terrace you can see views of the whole of Valencia and the areas surrounding it.

The very impressive octagonal bell-tower El Micalet is the landmark of Valencia and can be seen in all souvenir and postcard shops around town.

Built on an ancient Roman temple that was later a mosque, the Cathedral of Valencia is a Gothic-style building, although it preserves many elements from different periods, from Romanesque to Baroque eras. The Cathedral shows both history and art, and is dedicated since the era of Jaume I to the Assumption of Santa Maria.

There are 3 entrance to the cathedral and this one is called the Baroque-style Door of the Irons

The cathedral is laid out in the form of a cross with the three wide apses leading toward the gigantic altar whose centerpiece consists of a series of frescoes.

The Cathedral's treasures is the Renaissance frescoes of the main altar, which were rediscovered ten years ago by removing the Baroque vault that covered them. The paintings were commissioned by Cardinal Rodrigo de Borja, future Pope Alexander V, to the Italian artists Paolo da San Leocadio and Francesco Pagano, who began the work in 1476. 200 years later they were covered in the Baroque reform of the presbytery of the Cathedral. They represent twelve angels playing musical instruments. It is one of the most important pictorial works of the first Spanish Renaissance.

Documentation and archaeological studies lead us to think that the Holy Grail of Valencia is the one used by Jesus in the last supper.

The Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI used this relic when celebrating the Eucharist on their visits to Valencia. It is a cup of polished agate of an oriental origin. Tradition says that, after the last supper, Saint Peter took it to Rome and the Popes who succeeded it kept it there until Saint Sixtus II, who then sent it to Huesca, and during Muslim invasion, the chalice was hidden in the Pyrenees. It was Alfonso the Magnanimous who brought it back to the palace of Valencia. Nowadays it can be seen in the Chapel of the Holy Chalice at the Cathedral.