Torre Ripalda (La Pagoda)

Facing the old Turia riverbed, on the Paseo de la Alameda, stands a building that's hard to ignore: the Torre Ripalda, known to everyone as La Pagoda. Its curved balconies and stepped massing give it a vaguely oriental air, like a whim out of place, and that's exactly why it works. It's one of the city's least photographed modern icons, though lovers of 20th-century architecture hold it in high regard.

History and architecture

It was built between 1967 and 1973 on the plot once occupied by the vanished Palacio de Ripalda, a lavish neo-Gothic villa from 1889 that was demolished (its loss is still mourned in the city). The commission went to the EVV studio, formed by young architects Antonio Escario, José Antonio Vidal and José Vives, who produced one of the most singular works of Valencian late modernism. Its fourteen residential floors are grouped into two stepped bodies, with terraced planters in a line and horizontal brick bands that curve at the ends to accentuate the verticality, hence the characteristic "pagoda" profile.

What to see and how to get there

It's a residential building, so there's no interior visit, but it's worth walking around it on foot to see how its silhouette changes with the angle. It stands at the end of the Alameda, beside the Turia riverbed and a short walk from the green heart of the city. It's easy to reach on foot through the Turia garden or by metro (Alameda stop).

Insider

Local curiosity: the best photo isn't head on, but from the bridge over the riverbed at sunset, when the low sun traces the curved shadows of the balconies and the tower really does look like an Asian temple beached beside the dry river. It's a building both loved and argued over: for many Valencians it embodies the modernity of the 1970s, for others the wound of having lost the palace that once stood here. Since you're at the Turia, carry on to Gulliver Park and the Ciutat de les Arts; plan the area with our what to do in València guide and get around with how to get around València.