On the road out to the beach is located the new Cuidad de las Artes y las Ciencias, City of the Arts and Science. The enormous complex includes a huge science museum a planetarium, an unfinished concert hall and the massive L’Oceanografic, Oceanarium. Designed by Valencian architect Santiago Calatrava and started in July 1996, it is an impressive example of modern architecture.

Since this forms part of the City of Arts and Sciences, you can assume that every building has architectural appeal, that the signing in Valenciano, Spanish. There are two restaurants and several places to buy snacks, as well as the normal souvenir stalls.

The Hemesferic was the first building to be completed in 1998 – an extraordinary Calatrava creation resembling a huge eyeball floating above a pool of water. The eye even blinks with the aid of a steel and glass shutter operated by hydraulic lifts. When you’ve finished drinking in the impossibility of the building’s architecture it’s well worth taking in a show at the Hemesferic’s planetarium or Imax theater. The entrance building represents a whale’s head and tail and gives access to the islands outside or to the Mediterranean pavilion. This alone has seven large aquaria with something like 7,400 creatures. They claim to have 45,000 creatures of 500 different species in the Oceanográfico and, give or take, the odd one–I don’t doubt it. The outside area is pretty phenomenal in itself, with numerous islands and masses of lovely rock, which is home to pelicans, spoonbills, flamingos, scarlet ibises, black-winged stilts, turtles, and other creatures.
The pavilion called Oceans is actually the Oceans one, where you walk through a long underground tunnel with fish, some large and fierce-looking, swimming on both sides of you and above you. The Temperate and Tropical Pavilion is very impressive, with big turtles and giant spider crabs being prominent, along with a sort of underwater kelp forest. Then comes the Delfinário (Delphinium), with five pools and , the 26 million liters of water largest in Europe, and big even by world standards.