Jardines de Monforte
Neoclassical garden built around fountains, a water-lily pond and thirty-three marble statues.
This guide to the Jardines de Monforte in Valencia follows a merchant's water-obsessed vision: when Juan Bautista Romero Almenar bought an old fruit orchard in 1849, he hired architect Sebastian Monleon to build not a lawn but a theater of moving water. You will meet the water-lily pond, the artificial mountain built just to give water somewhere to fall, and the thirty-three marble statues watching from the hedges, with Poseidon presiding over it all. The story follows the garden through the marquis's death and the chance inheritance that gave the garden the name it still carries, long before it ever opened its gates to the public.
Audio guides are written and narrated by AI.