The former Royal gardens are today more well-known as the Gardens of Viveros.
The huge grounds, adjacent to the even more expansive parks of the Turia riverbed, used to be the home to the royal palace, before it was bombed to pieces in 1810 during the Peninsular War against the occupying French. Today, it houses the Museum of Natural Sciences.
The park is extremely beautiful — especially contrasted with the more utilitarian parks of the Turia riverbed. Popular with Valencians and close to the University, the park can be extremely busy on a Sunday afternoon. It’s also the site of concerts over the summer and during Fallas.
Viveros is how the garden is most usually referred to nowadays. The word means “nursery” or “breeding ground”, and could refer to the growing of plants. There was also a zoo here, which might have contributed to the name. I’m pretty sure the zoo has been closed now in favor of the BioParc which recently opened further west.
A lot of what I’ve just said is conjecture, so I have 2 questions for our native Valencian readers:
- What is the reason for the name change to Viveros?
- What happened to the zoo? I can’t find any information online about it, and I sure didn’t see anything resembling a zoo on our recent walk in the gardens. A giant bird-cage, yes, but that doesn’t count.
And, is there anything else special about the Viveros Gardens that we should be looking out for? Feel free to leave comments, or post in our forums!
It’s incredible…I hope to be here very soon ^_^ Valencia is one of the best cities of Spain.
Hi guys, I dont know about the name change, but there definitely was a Zoo there. I have some photos somewhere.
It wasn’t very big to be fair, so its old footprint might not be that obvious.
The park is beautiful- the Valencianos call it Jardines de Real I believe… Also on Sundays the museum is free- it has a cool dinosaur exhibit, and a big section about Valencia’s flood. I thought it was pretty interesting, and worth walking through at no cost 🙂
hi man
i benn reading your blog for a while and i think that is a good blog ,,,im from valencia and im studying in these moment because i have a test for be a local tourist guide on saturday(english test) im impress miself with your blog because is much better than anyone i see before about valencia and is good too as a resume of tipicaL costums from here (in english)….
noww i tell yoo what you ask about viveros gardens,,,it was called jardines del real because there was a palace named “palacio del real” at the same location,,,,,
it was a zoo too inside the gardens but it was the worst i seen in my life,,,really just for cry,,,animals went crazy….just one example: there was a monkey who pick all the cigarretes from the people soo imagine a monkey smoking,, that means anything you give to him for smoke he smokeed ( joints included)
thanks to good for make disapear that horrible zoo….
anyway thank you for your blog and keep writing,,,ciaoo adeuu taluego
Hello Edy,
thank you very much for reading our blog.
After your description of the Zoo, I am kind of sad it’s gone. Just think about the millions of fun Youtube Videos you could take there. Dope smoking monkey, lol!
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