Culture
Valencia is known internationally for the Falles (Las Fallas), a local festival held in March, and for paella valenciana, traditional Valencian ceramics, intricate traditional dress, and the architecture of the City of Arts and Sciences designed by Santiago Calatrava and Félix Candela.
La Tomatina, an annual tomato fight, draws crowds to the nearby town of Buñol in August. There are also a number of well-preserved traditional Catholic festivities throughout the year. Holy week celebrations in Valencia are considered some of the most colourful in Spain. Valencia has a metro system, the Metrovalencia (Valencia Metro).
Valencia is the current location of the Formula One European Grand Prix, first hosting the event on 24 August 2008. The city will host the event until at least 2014.
The University of Valencia (officially Universitat de València Estudi General) was founded in 1499, being one of the oldest surviving universities in Spain, and the oldest university in the Valencian Community. It was listed as one of the four leading Spanish universities in the 2011 Shangai Academic Ranking of World Universities. In 2011, Berklee College of Music in Boston announced the opening of a new campus at the Palau de les Arts Reina Sofia providing focus on the music of the region through its Mediterranean Music Institute.
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Famous quotes containing the word culture:
“The second fundamental feature of culture is that all culture has an element of striving.”
—Johan Huizinga (1872–1945)
“One of the oddest features of western Christianized culture is its ready acceptance of the myth of the stable family and the happy marriage. We have been taught to accept the myth not as an heroic ideal, something good, brave, and nearly impossible to fulfil, but as the very fibre of normal life. Given most families and most marriages, the belief seems admirable but foolhardy.”
—Jonathan Raban (b. 1942)
“The first time many women hold their tiny babies, they are apt to feel as clumsy and incompetent as any man. The difference is that our culture tells them they’re not supposed to feel that way. Our culture assumes that they will quickly learn how to be a mother, and that assumption rubs off on most women—so they learn.”
—Pamela Patrick Novotny (20th century)