Porta dels Serrans

Just a few steps away from my current residence loom the twin towers of Porta de Serrans (Torres de Serranos), one of only two remaining city gates in València. There used to be twelve such gates that formed part of the ancient city wall which was pulled down in 1865 on the orders of the provincial governor, who clearly wasn’t a fan of history. Porta de Serrans was built in 1392 and served as the main entrance to the city since the main routes from both Barcelona to the northeast and Zaragoza to the north met right here. It was also built originally with a defensive function though the imposing façade of the gate is so intimidating I don’t see why anyone would even dare attack it. From 1586 until 1887 the towers were used as a prison for nobles.

Since the towers are so close by, I often see people climbing up to the higher parts of it. This means that visitors are allowed and I always promised myself to scale the heights of this monument and see for myself. This day has finally come — I just hoped my knees wouldn’t hate me too much afterwards. Ewa and I met up again and it was time to start climbing. (Sorry for being a bit overdramatic about the whole climbing thing … but the towers really are quite imposing so mental preparation is totally required.) Fortunately I’ve done quite a few major climbs in the last couple of months so one more shouldn’t really be too bad, should it?

We were welcomed at the side gate by a couple of older ladies who were in charge of … well, I’m not exactly sure what, since there was no charge, they didn’t write anything down, I didn’t even see a counter for them to track the numbers of people visiting. I think they told us to use the hand sanitizer and that was it. Why two of them were needed? I do not know. They were very friendly though and encouraged us to go up. So we did go up. And up. And more up.

The best thing of going up, as you already know, is that you can see down from up there. And the views were amazing. Unfortunately, they were only towards the Ciutat Vella, but that was still very cool as we could see over the roofs towards all the major landmarks such as the various church towers and cupolas. I wish we could have seen to the “away” side as well; it is always interesting to look out from castles and the like to see what it was that the residents and protectors could see, or, rather, how far they could see. In this case we had to be happy to look out over the old city instead. As with most of our walks, the sun was setting already (it is mid-November after all, the days are getting shorter and shorter), which made it a bit trickier to control the glare in the photos, but I think you can still appreciate the views.

I did wonder, however, how exactly were the nobles imprisoned here since there didn’t seem to be any actual chambers they could be locked up in, unless there used to be iron bars or cages in those empty spaces. I tried finding some old paintings of the south side of the towers to see what they looked like earlier but all I found were ones of the northern façade which still looks very similar to how it did hundreds of years ago, albeit a bit shorter (how is that possible?) and with fewer windows. I am very intrigued but this structure and may have to do further research.

All in all it was totally worth it to climb all the way to the top (well, technically not all the way since the very top was closed off this time), as the views really were fabulous. This is such a beautiful city seen from the ground, but, I’m happy to report, it is also quite lovely from up high.