In our travel around Spain we have been to the beautiful city of Valencia and have visited the Lonja de la Seda (Silk Exchange), a nice group of buildings built between 1482 and 1533 in Late Gothic Flamboyant style, originally used for silk trading and then for commerce in general. The rectangular space of the Lonja includes the huge Trading Hall, the square Tower with the Chapel, the Consulate and the garden.

The exterior of the buildings (to visit it well you have to see all the façades) is crenellated and finely decorated with ornamented windows and doors (the main doorway is the nicest), gargoyles, coat of arms and religious and profane sculpture. The most noteworthy features of the exterior are certainly the nicely decorated windows of the upper floor of the Consulate, also with portrait medallions and gargoyles, forming a sort of gallery. The exterior of the buildings is certainly nice, but in my opinion it isn’t exceptional, because there are many palaces comparable to this one.

The interior is opened from 9.15 to 14 and from 17.30 to 21 (in winter from 16.30 to 20); it is always closed on Monday and on Saturday and Sunday there is a free ticket. The main feature of the Lonja is the enormous Trading Hall. It is divided in three aisles by five rows of incredibly high and strange spiral columns (this is in my opinion the only one feature of the Lonja really stunning, even if it isn’t unique; for example, it reminds me the columns of the church of the Jacobins in Toulouse) from which the vaults spring; interesting is also the Latin inscription in Gothic characters on the walls and the coloured floor. Adjacent to the Trading Hall is the square chapel, on the ground floor of the tower, with nice vaulting springing from the corner columns. The three storeyed Consulate building contains on the first floor the Gilded Chamber, with carved, gilded and painted decoration, notable above all because its really beautiful coffered ceiling, and on the ground floor an absolutely ordinary and even not nice room.

Apart from the WHS, the historic centre of Valencia as a whole is beautiful and contains many important monuments, nice streets and squares. The most important building is the cathedral, a mixture of many different styles, the most composite church I have seen in Spain, with a fine baroque façade, a strong Gothic tower, beautiful portals and above all the finely decorated drum. The most beautiful view of the cathedral is from Virgin Mary’s Square, on which overlooks the strangest façade of the church, very unusual because of its strange Renaissance loggia, which looks more as a façade of a palace. Other important monuments are the huge Generalitat Palace, quite similar in the late Gothic style to the Lonja de la Seda, the incredibly enormous Gothic twin city gates of Serrans and Quart, among the most beautiful I have ever seen, and the Renaissance Patriarch’s College. A special mention should be made for the Marquis de Dosaigües’s Palace, certainly the most beautiful in Valencia, with stunning reliefs, sculptures, an incredibly fine portal and the perfect contrast of many harmonic colours. Valencia has also some of the most beautiful buildings of contemporary architecture in Europe in the breathtaking complex of the City of the Arts and the Sciences, 350000 square metres large, mainly built by Santiago Calatrava, with huge buildings like the Sciences Museum, the Arts Palace, the “Hemisfèric”, the “Umbracle”, the “Oceanographic” and the works for a lyric theatre still going on. A very unusual feature of Valencia is the park placed in the huge bed of the dried river Turia, where is also the beautiful Palace of the Music and the Exposition Bridge.

I quite liked the Lonja de la Seda, but I think it is worthy of a visit if you are in Valencia more than of a long travel to visit expressly it; however the whole historic centre absolutely deserves a visit, as it is really beautiful. I think that it could be inscribed on the WHL entirely and not only the Lonja de la Seda, which in my opinion, even if it is very nice, authentic and conserved, isn’t really unique on its own as there are many similar beautiful palaces.

In the photo is the main façade of the Lonja de la Seda.