Valencia’s rites of spring will leave you deafened, blinded and dumbstruck

^{[photo courtesy Spanish-Living.com]}

Meet L’Hemisfèric, one of the five attractions that make up the dazzling, ultramodern City of Arts and Sciences (known as Ciutat de les Arts i les Ciències in Catalan, or Ciudad de las Artes y las Ciencias in Spanish) in Valencia, Spain. This “city,” completed in 2004 by renowned Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava, includes an opera house, a garden, a science museum and an oceanographic park. The cherry on top of this sensory overload sundae is, of course, L’Hemisfèric: an entertainment complex boasting the trifecta of IMAX theater, laserium and planetarium. And if you’re into creepy nicknames, feel free to call it the “Eye of Knowledge.” (According to Spanish-Living.com, “The eye even blinks with the aid of a steel and glass shutter operated by hydraulic lifts.”)

^{[photos courtesy Hipocondriaca, . Bambo]}

As it turns out, right now would be an excellent time to make a trip to Valencia, as the whole town is gearing up for Las Fallas. Held on March 15-19, this annual celebration welcomes spring in the very best way: with FIRE and NOISE. During the festivities, celebrants construct enormous firecracker-stuffed puppets (called ninots), usually grotesque or satirical figures, which get paraded around the streets and placed in tableaus (fallas). Every day at 2pm, pyrotechnicians try to out-muscle each other in La Mascletá, a fireworks competition that focuses on sheer bone-rattling percussive power instead of sparkly lights. (They refer to the finale as the terremoto, meaning “earthquake.”) As you might expect, the whole thing culminates in an epic conflagration: Nit del Foc (”The Night of Fire”). According to Valencia City Guide:

All Fallas burn all over the city the following night (including the winner of the competition) in a tremendous spectacle of fire and joy. Valencia is at that moment like Nero’s Rome, a city in flames.

And indeed, so it would seem: