The City of Arts and Sciences is Valencia's statement to the world, the complex of museums and theaters and aquarium that Santiago Calatrava designed in the dry bed of the Turia River. The buildings whose white concrete forms suggest bones or shells or sails, the reflecting pools that double their impact, the nighttime lighting that transforms them - the City of Arts and Sciences is architecture as destination.

The complex includes the Oceanografic aquarium, Europe's largest, the Hemisferic IMAX theater, the science museum, and the Palau de les Arts opera house. The investment that Valencia made, the tourism that the architecture attracts - the City of Arts and Sciences is what urban reinvention looks like when a city commits.

The Turia Gardens run nine kilometers through the city, the linear park that replaced the river after flooding in 1957 convinced Valencia to divert it. The gardens that fill what was riverbed, the playgrounds and sports facilities and paths that connect neighborhoods - the Turia is Valencia's green spine, the transformation that turned flood risk into public space.

The gardens connect old city to City of Arts and Sciences, the walk or cycle that traces what water once flowed. The Turia is what Valencia shows visitors who ask what cities can do with abandoned infrastructure - the boldness to reimagine what seemed fixed.

Paella was invented here, the rice dish that Valencia claims and that the world has adopted (often poorly, Valencians say). The original Valencian paella contains rabbit and snails and beans and rosemary - not the seafood that tourists expect - the dish of the countryside rather than the coast. The seafood paella that restaurants serve tourists is valid but not original; purists insist on distinction.

The paella served in restaurants near the Albufera lagoon where the rice grows, the paella cooked over orange wood as tradition requires - the dish is ritual as much as meal. The Valencians who take paella seriously, who dismiss what other cities serve - food nationalism finds expression in rice.

Las Fallas is Valencia's festival of fire, the March celebration where neighborhoods spend months building elaborate sculptures only to burn them on the final night. The fallas that satirize politicians and celebrities, that demonstrate craftsmanship that flames will consume, that fill streets with visitors who come to watch destruction - Las Fallas is what Valencians wait for all year.

The festival is UNESCO-listed Intangible Heritage, the tradition that has continued since the 18th century, the explosions and noise and smoke that define the week. The mascletas daytime fireworks that assault ears, the crema where fires consume year's work - Las Fallas is Valencia's identity, the controlled chaos that celebrates creativity through destruction.

The old town that predates Valencia's reinvention holds the history that the City of Arts and Sciences lacks - the Gothic cathedral that may hold the Holy Grail, the Silk Exchange whose Gothic hall earned UNESCO status, the ceramics museum in a Baroque palace. The old town's plazas and streets, the markets where locals shop, the bars where tapas culture thrives - the old town is what Valencia was before it became what it's becoming.

The old town and the futuristic new exist in relationship - the past that grounds the present, the present that doesn't abandon the past. Valencia is both, the city that reinvented without destroying what reinvention builds upon.