Hotels near Malvarrosa Beach

Malvarrosa Beach (Platja de la Malvarrosa) is the most popular stretch of Valencia's 4 km city seafront - a wide ribbon of fine golden sand, 135m from the promenade to the water at its widest, with a long pedestrian passeig marítim lined with paella restaurants, ice-cream parlours, and surf rental kiosks.

The beach hides a literary past. Vicente Blasco Ibáñez, the Valencian novelist whose Cañas y Barro and La Barraca defined the regional literary canon, lived in a villa on the seafront that is now the Casa-Museo Blasco Ibáñez. Hemingway favoured the same beach when researching For Whom the Bell Tolls, and Joaquín Sorolla painted the fishermen's wives mending nets in canvases that hang in Madrid's Sorolla Museum and the Hispanic Society in New York. Behind the beach, the Cabanyal barrio of low fishermen's houses with hand-painted ceramic tile facades is one of the most distinctive walks in the city.

Pro Tip: Skip the larger tourist-trap paelladors directly on the front. Walk one block back into Cabanyal for Casa Carmela (founded 1922) or La Pepica (Hemingway's haunt) for the real thing - book Sunday lunch at least 48 hours ahead.