Spain · Comunitat Valenciana · Valencia
Marxalenes, Valencia — Area Guide & Where to Stay
Marxalenes, Marchalenes in Castilian, is a barrio of Valencia in the La Zaidía district, its name from the marshland north of the old walls.
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Where to stay in Marxalenes
The practical side of choosing where to sleep.
The park is the centre now. The Parque de Marchalenes came out of a wholesale rebuilding at the turn of the century and holds the Joanot Martorell municipal library on calle Reus, which makes the north side of the barrio the pleasant half to stay in. MetroValencia reaches it directly.
The estacioneta de Marchalenes was the first station of what is now line 1 to be built in the metropolitan area, and everything ran through it until Pont de Fusta opened, so the barrio has been on the network longer than most of Valencia. The rest is ordinary streets.
About Marxalenes
What are the main landmarks in Marxalenes?
Three convents stood here and none survives. The convent of Gratia Dei on the Llano de la Zaidía took its second name from the Andalusi king Zayd, whose palace had been on the spot, and it was pulled down in 1960 and rebuilt at Benaguacil. A Carthusian house followed.
The Convento de la Anunciada de Porta Coeli stood here in the 15th century, and an Augustinian house dedicated to Nuestra Señora de la Esperanza was founded in 1509 and had gone by the early 19th century. One railway building is still in use. The Marchalenes station of 1887 now houses a centre for people with disabilities, and the parish church of Santiago Apóstol on calle del Doctor Oloriz is the rebuilt successor to the one the flood took.
What is the history of Marxalenes?
The ground was marsh. Marjales formed in the hollow outside the northern walls of Valencia, fed by the Turia flooding again and again until the Plan Sur diverted the river after October 1957, and the Arabic marchilena for that ground is where the name begins. Jaume I handed the land out.
It went to squires of Fernando Pérez de Pina, and the counts of Rótova and the marquesses of Malferit held property here later, the place appearing as Marjalena or Marjalenas in the documents until the 16th century. The flood of 1957 nearly finished it. Water reached five metres on the calle del Doctor Oloriz, the parish church of Santiago Apóstol collapsed days afterwards along with the abbey house beside it, and a few hundred people sat out the night in the upper galleries of the parish cinema, which held.
The rebuilding came at the end of the century. The Parque de Marchalenes was laid out on ground the barrio had lost, and the library, sports centre and health centre that followed have turned the north end into the part of Marxalenes with anything to look at.
Where is Marxalenes?
Marxalenes lies in the fifth district of Valencia, La Zaidía, north of the old city on the low ground the Turia used to flood, with the Parque de Marchalenes at its northern end.
More areas in Valencia
Updated September 2026