City of Arts and Sciences
Valencia’s City of Arts and Sciences exists because a 1957 flood forced the city to divert its river, leaving a dry riverbed that later became a futuristic architecture complex.
Destination
Water World Lloret
Water World opened in 1985 as one of Spain’s first water parks — and 40 years later still holds European records for its rides.
La Fosca
A 1272 deed recorded the right to tax fish landed on La Fosca beach — a working fishing ground for at least 750 years, watched over by a king’s coastal fortress.
Iberian Town of Ullastret
Ullastret was the largest Iberian city in Catalonia — and in 2012, excavators found human skulls nailed up as war trophies in its own streets.
Cork Museum of Palafrugell
Palafrugell’s Cork Museum occupies Spain’s largest former cork factory — an Art Nouveau building for a material that once employed most of the town.
Ciutadella de Roses
The Ciutadella de Roses encloses 2,300 years of layered history — Greek, Roman, Visigothic and medieval — inside a 16th-century artillery fortress.
Salvador Dalí House Museum
Dalí’s house in Portlligat grew from a single fisherman’s hut into a labyrinth of nine buildings over 40 years — and contains no paintings at all.
Aiguamolls de l’Empordà Natural Park
Aiguamolls de l’Empordà was drained as malarial swampland, then deliberately rebuilt — even its rice fields were replanted on purpose for the birds.
Aquarama Water Park
Aquarama sits directly on the Mediterranean, home to The Devil’s Drop — one of the world’s eleventh-highest waterslides — since 1986.
Arch of Cabanes
Local legend says the Arch of Cabanes was built overnight by moonlight — archaeologists still aren’t entirely certain why this 2nd-century Roman arch was really built.