
Torres de Serranos
Fourteenth-century Gothic gate towers that once sheltered evacuated Prado masterpieces from wartime bombing.
Location
About this audio guide
This guide to Torres de Serranos in Valencia opens in December 1936, when architect Jose Lino Vaamonde stood inside these fourteenth-century gate towers with days, not months, to protect masterpieces evacuated from Madrid's Prado Museum from wartime bombing. You'll hear why he chose this particular gate, raised between 1392 and 1398 to guard the road from Aragon, and the choices he made about walls, roofs and an entirely new floor. The guide also touches on the tower's earlier life as a prison for disgraced nobles.
This audio guide was created using AI.
Similar places
Quart Towers
Cannon-scarred medieval gate towers, once a women's prison, now nesting ground for wild parrots.
Plaza del Tossal
Buried Islamic city gate and defensive tower, unearthed beneath a lively square and shown in an underground gallery.
Real Parroquia de los Santos Juanes Valencia
Gothic parish church with a baroque vault reborn through video-mapped light after a civil-war fire.
Museo del Corpus - Casa de las Rocas
Medieval storehouse of towering wooden Corpus Christi carts pulled by horses and topped with carved beasts.
Convento de Santo Domingo
Former Dominican monastery whose gothic cloister and chapter house survive inside a working army headquarters.
Portal de Valldigna
Semicircular ashlar arch marking the old boundary between the Christian city and its medieval Moorish quarter.