Valencia's City of Arts and Sciences: which building is a museum, an aquarium or an opera house

The short answer

The City of Arts and Sciences is a group of buildings, and the first decision is which of them you mean. The complex's own architecture page names six: the Hemisfèric, the Museu de les Ciències, the Oceanogràfic, the Palau de les Arts, the Umbracle and the Àgora.[1] Three of them, the Hemisfèric, the Museu and the Oceanogràfic, are sold through the complex's own ticket system, singly or combined.[5][9] The opera house and CaixaForum, inside the Àgora, sell their own tickets.[8][6]

XTOUR does not publish prices or opening hours for any of the buildings, and it does not say how long each visit takes.

Who is behind the complex

The complex is a project of the Generalitat Valenciana, the regional government. The history section of the same page is headed by the company Ciudad de las Artes y las Ciencias, S.A., founded in July 1996 when Vacico, a trading company run by the Valencian government, changed its name and its corporate purpose to suit the new projects. The page does not say in so many words which body operates each building day to day; the site's copyright line credits the Ciutat de les Arts i les Ciències and the Generalitat Valenciana. The buildings stand on the old bed of the River Turia, which was diverted after catastrophic flooding in 1957; the dry riverbed became a park crossing the city.[1]

Even the complex's own pages differ on that park. The architecture page calls it ten kilometres long, while the visitor-information page describes the old riverbed as an urban oasis over eight kilometres long.[2][1]

The six buildings, one by one

The Hemisfèric is a projection dome designed by Santiago Calatrava. It opened to the public on 16 April 1998, the first building of the complex to do so, and its hall seats over 300 people under a concave screen of 900 square metres. It shows IMAX and digital films, and the complex's FAQ says a Hemisfèric ticket is valid for one screening.[10][3]

The Museu de les Ciències is an interactive science museum, also by Calatrava, opened in 2000.[1] Its programme mixes exhibitions, hands-on workshops and science shows.[4] According to the complex's FAQ, visitors may leave and re-enter it on the same day as long as they keep their ticket.[10]

The Oceanogràfic is an aquarium whose buildings each represent a marine environment, from the Mediterranean and wetlands to the Antarctic, the Arctic and the Red Sea, plus a dolphinarium; its access building and underwater restaurant have roofs by Félix Candela.[5] It is presented by the complex as one of its buildings, but its own website is run by a private company: the Oceanogràfic's legal notice names Avanqua Oceanogràfic, S.L., which also sells tickets under its own online terms.[12][11] Both the complex's FAQ and the Oceanogràfic's own FAQ allow re-entry to the aquarium only in limited cases, chiefly a combined ticket for the same date or a school group, and the Oceanogràfic adds that tickets are non-refundable once bought.[13][10]

The Palau de les Arts, another Calatrava building, is an opera house and performing-arts centre inaugurated in 2005.[15][6] Les Arts' "who we are" page sets out the board of the Fundació Palau de les Arts Reina Sofía, with the President of the Generalitat Valenciana as honorary president.[14] Its performances and its building tours are sold through lesarts.com; the tours include guided, audio-guide and leaflet visits.[16][6]

The Umbracle is a landscaped walkway of more than 14,000 square metres built over the complex's car park, with an Art Promenade that the complex describes as a free-access space for sculpture exhibitions.[7]

The Àgora is a large covered space between the Assut de l'Or bridge and the Oceanogràfic that now houses CaixaForum València, a cultural centre built inside it from 2018 to a project by the architect Enric Ruiz-Geli. CaixaForum's events are booked on CaixaForum's own site.[8]

How the tickets work

The complex's rates page sells three products: a single ticket for one venue on one day, a combined ticket for two venues on one day, and a "La Ciutat" ticket covering one, two or three days with "access to the entire complex".[9] The Oceanogràfic page adds the conditions for combinations with the Museu and the Hemisfèric: valid for one, two or three consecutive days, with no repeat visit to the same building on a different day, and with a date set for each venue.[5]

According to the complex's FAQ, tickets are sold online, at the on-site ticket offices and through authorised vendors, and cannot be cancelled or refunded, though the date can be changed before the visit date, at most twice and within a year. The rates page does not list which buildings "the entire complex" means; XTOUR's reading, from the complex's own FAQ, is that its tickets cover the Hemisfèric, the Museu and the Oceanogràfic, and that the opera house and CaixaForum are booked separately.[8][6][10]

Where the official pages disagree

• Five or six. The architecture page says the complex "is made up of five main elements" and then lists six.[1]
• Who designed the Àgora. The same page's text credits the Àgora to Santiago Calatrava, while its chronology gives Félix Candela as the Àgora's architect.[1]
• When the Oceanogràfic opened. The architecture page's chronology gives 2002; the Palau de les Arts page says the Oceanogràfic opened to the public in 2003.[6][1]
• The opera house's numbers. The complex's page gives the Auditori 1,490 seats and the grounds 87,000 square metres of landscaping; Les Arts' own page gives 1,450 seats and more than 60,000 square metres of garden.[15][6]

None of these changes what a visitor buys, but they are worth knowing before repeating a figure.

The six at a glance

What XTOUR does not tell you

XTOUR does not publish prices, opening hours, dolphinarium times or visit lengths, and it has not assessed accessibility. It does not say how many buildings fit into a day, or how to get to the complex from elsewhere in Valencia; it has no routing data. It treats the complex as a group of separate buildings rather than one place, and does not describe the Turia riverbed park beyond what the complex's own pages say.

For the city as a base, see the Valencia destination page and the Spain travel guide.