Portal de Valldigna and the Historic Moorish Quarter
Why is it significant?
Pass beneath the delicate pointed stone archway of the Portal de Valldigna and pause to observe the intimate alleyway framed by ancient residential facades.
Key Facts
| Place | Portal de Valldigna and the Historic Moorish Quarter |
|---|---|
| Address | Carrer del Portal de Valldigna, 2, 46003 València, Spain |
| Geo Coordinates | 39.47790, -0.37760 |
| Part of Walk | Valencia Old Town: The Silk Exchange, Medieval Towers, and Holy Grail Cathedral |
| Generated | Generated |
Pass beneath the delicate pointed stone archway of the Portal de Valldigna and pause to observe the intimate alleyway framed by ancient residential facades. Pierced in the year 1400 through the standing tenth-century Islamic defensive wall, this atmospheric portal was opened by the municipal government to provide direct access between the Christian city and the Moorish quarter or Morería. It took its name from the nearby urban palace of the Cistercian abbots of the Royal Monastery of Santa María de Valldigna, located in the southern coastal valley.
Above the crown of the arch rests a small, revered altarpiece of polychrome ceramic tiles dating from 1589, depicting the Virgin of Valldigna flanked by King James the Second of Aragon and Cistercian monks, beneath the heraldic coats of arms of the monastery and the city. In front of this arch on a fateful day in 1474, the German printer Lambert Palmart and his Valencian associates established the printing workshop that published Les Trobes en lahors de la Verge Maria, the very first literary book printed in the Spanish language and typography on the Iberian Peninsula.
As you step through into the Morería, the urban texture shifts noticeably into narrow, winding alleyways designed to disrupt desert winds and maximize cooling shade. Here lived Muslim artisans, blacksmiths, and pottery masters who chose to remain in Valencia after 1238, contributing their unrivaled agricultural and hydraulic engineering mastery until their tragic expulsion decreed by royal edict in 1609.
Touch the exposed sections of rammed-earth masonry visible beside the arch foundations: they are genuine surviving fragments of the formidable eleventh-century Islamic city wall erected by the Moorish king Abd al-Aziz, mixed with crushed limestone, river gravel, and lime mortar that have hardened into stone over nine centuries.
Follow the curved lane southward toward Plaza del Árbol, one of the most picturesque secret squares of the old town.