Torres de Serranos

At the edge of the old town, a great pair of stone towers, joined by a gate and pierced by a high arch, rises where the city wall once ran. This is the Torres de Serranos, one of the grand medieval gates of Valencia and among the finest surviving city gates of its kind anywhere.

The gate was built in the late fourteenth century as one of the main entrances through the walls that once ringed the city, a defensive and ceremonial gateway designed to impress arrivals as much as to keep enemies out.

Though most of the old walls are long gone, this gate survived, partly because it was later used as a prison for nobles, which spared it from demolition when the rest of the fortifications came down.

The two towers, polygonal and battlemented, flank a tall central arch, and the side facing the city is open in tiers of galleries, an unusual and elegant design that makes the gate as much a stage as a fortress.

You can climb the gate, up stairs and through the galleries to the top, where a terrace gives a wide view over the old town's rooftops on one side and the green park of the old riverbed on the other.

The gate stands at one end of the long riverbed park, so it marks the historic edge of the old town and the start of the green route that runs down through the city to the modern arts complex.

It has long played a part in the city's festivals, serving as a grand backdrop and even a stage for the opening of Valencia's great spring fire festival, when the gate is lit and crowds fill the square below.

The stonework rewards a close look, the carving around the arch and the battlements showing the skill and ambition of the medieval city that raised it as its showpiece entrance.

Together with another surviving gate elsewhere in the old town, it gives a sense of how the walls once enclosed the city, and how grand the entrances to a medieval town could be.

The square around the gate, by the river park, is a pleasant place to pause, and the climb is short and rewarding, so the gate makes an easy and satisfying stop on a walk through the old town.

A few practical notes. The climb is ticketed and inexpensive, sometimes free on certain days; come in the morning to climb before the heat, and combine it with a walk along the river park that begins at its foot.

Climb through the galleries to the terrace, with the old town on one side and the green river on the other, and the medieval gate gives you both the history and the layout of the city in one view. When you come back down, the park leads on toward the modern city at the river's far end.