Santiago Calatrava has become the best Spanish contemporary architect and one of the most appreciated in the World. Born at Valencia, in July 1951, he designed in 1991 the City of Arts and Sciences, a great complex that is now becoming finished in the Southern corner of that Mediterranean city.

The Calatrava's style mix the most advanced architectural design and use of building technology with the ancient European artistic traditions. As happened with the modernist Antonio Gaudí at the end of the XIX century, the shape of Gothic style is easily identified in the futuristic structures designed by Calatrava. What we thought, indeed, when we saw by the first time the group formed by the Hemispheric and the Museum of Sciences of Valencia was that we were watching a fascinating mixture of Gaudí and Stars War.

The City of Arts and Sciences is constituted by the Oceanographic Museum, the Prince Felipe Museum of Sciences, the Planetarium, and the Queen Sofía Museum of Arts, all these buildings being placed in the context of a great scenery made of blue water, white gates and green vegetation. Combined with the brilliant sunlight of Valencia, all these elements make you feel immersed in a foreing planet surrounded by the Mediterranean. Valencia has ever been a city to visit, but Calatrava's work has made now such a visit mandatory. If you come to Spain, don't miss it.