Logbook · 8 places

What to see and do in Sollana

What to see and do in Sollana (La Ribera Baixa, Valencia): 8 places across monuments, nature, activities and curiosities, with a photo and a Google Maps location.

1 Villages · 1 Monuments · 2 Nature · 1 Activities · 1 Curiosities · 1 Historical milestones · 1 Food and drink

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Spain › Valencian Community › Valencia › La Ribera Baixa › Sollana

What to see and do in Sollana

Sollana
Village
Sollana is a municipality in La Ribera Baixa, at 4 metres above sea level, on flat land next to the Albufera de Valencia Natural Park, whose proximity favours the rice growing that gives the town its fame: it is considered the place where paella was born and the first point in the peninsula where this cereal was grown. It was taken in 1238 by Ximén de Urrea, its first lord after the conquest. The northern part of the territory, bordering the Albufera, is marshy and is home to more than 350 bird species, including herons, flamingos and ospreys. It has two Valencia commuter-rail stations. It is the birthplace of the neuropsychiatrist Juan José López-Ibor (1906-1991).
Festivities of Sollana
Activity
Sollana honours its patron saint, the Cristo de la Piedad, on 10 August, and its patron saint, Santa María Magdalena, on 22 July; the sources disagree on whether the patron saint is instead the Virgen de Aguas Vivas, venerated at a hermitage in the municipality.
Port of Sollana in the Albufera
Nature
The Portet de Sollana, barely 200 m from the outlet of the Albufera, is a former jetty of great ecological and touristic value, today used for canoeing and hiking. Between May and October, Sollana's rice fields are flooded, visually extending the surface of the Albufera until it recalls its extent of some 250 years ago, in a flat municipality formed by sediments of the Xúquer river.
Hermitage of la Virgen de Aguas Vivas de Sollana
Monument
Hermitage in Sollana in the district of Romaní, begun in 1893 and completed in 1930, home to the town's patron saint.
Juan José López-Ibor, neuropsychiatrist born in Sollana
Curiosity
The prominent Spanish neuropsychiatrist Juan José López-Ibor (1906-1991), a key figure in 20th-century Spanish psychiatry, was born on 22 April 1906 in Sollana, the son of a schoolteacher who went on to become the town's mayor. He studied medicine in Valencia, took his doctorate in Madrid in 1930 and pursued further studies in Zurich, Berlin, Munich, Paris and Tübingen between 1934 and 1938. He held the chair of Psychiatry in Madrid, was the first holder of that chair at the University of Salamanca in 1951, and was president of the World Psychiatric Association between 1966 and 1972. He coined the concept of thymopathy for mood disorders and founded the Spanish Society of Psychosomatic Medicine. He died in Madrid in 1991.
Birdwatching route of the Marjal de Sollana
Nature
A circular path through the rice fields and marshes of the Albufera Nature Park as it crosses Sollana, from which waterbirds and waders can be watched during the migration seasons.
Conquest of Sollana by Ximén de Urrea
Historical milestone
The troops commanded by Ximén de Urrea occupied in 1238 this place on the shore of the Albufera, whose name derives from a Roman villa of one Sulius. The irrigation of the marsh afterwards allowed rice growing to be extended here.
Night of the Paellas
Food and drink
August night on which the residents bring their stoves out into the street and cook hundreds of paellas with orange wood. People eat in the open air in groups and gangs, and it is the best-attended event of the municipality's patron saint festivities.