A friar's zeal built a university, a soldier burned its books
A papal request in 1246 took two and a half centuries to become a classroom near this ground.
Last reviewed 16 September 2026 · A three-minute read · 100 BC–now
The short answer
Colegio Guadalaviar, an international school in Valencia, was founded in 1959 by parents inspired by the teachings of Vincent Ferrer, whose earlier insistence had also pushed forward the founding of the nearby University of Valencia in 1499. Its 1958 building used exposed steel construction new to Valencia at the time.
Mestalla — 2012 · Maxim Karpinskiy · CC BY-SA 3.0
1246 to 1499
A friar's insistence turns a forgotten papal grant into a university
On April 30, 1499, the magistrates of Valencia passed a set of statutes. That act founded the University of Valencia, one of the oldest in Spain. It took two and a half centuries to get there.
The idea started with James I of Aragon, the king who took the city from its Muslim rulers in 1238. In 1246 he asked Pope Innocent IV for permission to open an estudi general. This was a school where Latin, philosophy and law could be taught under one roof. The pope granted it. Nothing much happened for two hundred years.
What finally moved it was a Dominican preacher named Vincent Ferrer, later made a saint. He insisted on the project and pushed the city to act. A local landowner, Mosen Pedro Vilaragut, gave a building to house it. Pope Alexander VI confirmed the university by bull in 1501. King Ferdinand the Catholic issued a royal charter the year after. The university taught Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Arabic, philosophy, mathematics, physics, theology, canon law and medicine from the start.
The university grew into one of Spain's leading schools for mathematics and medicine. Its graduates included Pedro Ximeno, who discovered a small bone in the human ear, and the botanist Cavanilles. By the seventeenth century it held a library of 27,000 volumes.
A papal yes in 1246 sat unused for two hundred and fifty years.
1811 to 1938
Soldiers and civil war both burned the same library
Soldiers under French general Louis-Gabriel Suchet occupied Valencia during the Napoleonic Wars. They burned the university's library of 27,000 volumes. Centuries of accumulated books were wiped out in a single act. The collection had to be rebuilt from nothing.
More than a century later, war reached the university again. During the Spanish Civil War, a fire in 1938 badly damaged the library a second time. Both fires fell on the same institution, in the same city. The university was built from a friar's insistence and a king's forgotten request. Campus buildings now stand a few streets from Valencia's old quarter. They include the faculties along the Avinguda de Blasco Ibañez. They are now ordinary lecture halls and offices that carry that history forward.
1499 to 1978
Scattered faculties finally settle onto one shared campus
The statutes of 1499 named subjects, not buildings. For most of the university's life, its faculties scattered across old Valencia. They did not sit in one place. That changed on the ground now covered by the University of Valencia campus. The Faculty of Philosophy and Education went up there in 1950. The Faculty of Geography and History followed in 1978. They were close enough to share the same paths. Both still stand within a few hundred feet of each other. They form a walkable cluster. James I asked Rome to permit this same institution in 1246.
The campus took decades to knit together. A rectorate building rose nearby in 1944. This gave the university its first administrative center apart from its teaching halls. What had been a papal favor and a friar's cause turned, piece by piece, into a fixed address.
A university founded by statute in 1499 did not get a permanent home until the twentieth century.
1958 to 1959
Parents and an architect found a school beside the university
Just north of the university's newer faculties, a different kind of institution was staking its own claim to this ground. In 1959 a group of parents founded the Colegio Guadalaviar. They were inspired by the priest Vincent Ferrer's teachings. Its building was finished the year before. It used exposed steel in a way no one in Valencia had built with yet. The university's history ran through statutes and papal bulls. This school's founding ran through a religious movement and a modern architect's ambition. Both sat on the same short stretch of the Avinguda de Blasco Ibañez. Both were acts of people deciding that formal learning belonged here.
Lecture halls and a schoolyard now sit on ground a king asked Rome to bless seven centuries ago.
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Ancient
Roman period, c. 100 BC – 410 AD
Roman-era pottery known as Samian ware has been found in Valencia, and the Roman city's walls have been traced over a kilometer from this spot, evidence of the town the Romans called Valentia Edetanorum.
The Del Real Palace, the residence of the kings of Valencia once nicknamed the '300 keys palace,' stood on the river's left bank until it was demolished; the site is now the Jardines del Real.
Valencia was besieged repeatedly across the medieval centuries, including sieges in 1092–1094, 1238, 1359, 1363 and 1364, all centered on the old walled city about 1.1 kilometers away.
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1145
Ibn Jubayr, the Arab traveller and geographer whose account of his pilgrimage became a classic of Arabic travel writing, was born in Valencia in 1145.
James I of Aragon captured Valencia in 1238, founding the Kingdom of Valencia, and was buried in the cathedral, 1.5 kilometers from here, on his death in 1276.
During the Spanish Civil War, Mestalla was requisitioned and used as a concentration camp and storage warehouse, and it lost most of its facilities in the process.
Colegio Guadalaviar, an international school a short walk east, was founded in 1959 by parents inspired by Josemaría Escrivá and is now rated among the region's best.
What happened at the University of Valencia before it was founded?
King James I of Aragon asked Pope Innocent IV in 1246 for permission to open an estudi general in Valencia, but the request went unacted upon for two centuries until the Dominican friar Vincent Ferrer pushed the project forward.
When was the University of Valencia founded?
The magistrates of Valencia passed the founding statutes on April 30, 1499, and the university was confirmed by a papal bull from Alexander VI in 1501 and a royal charter from Ferdinand the Catholic the following year.
What was here before the modern university campus was built?
For most of its history the university's faculties were scattered across old Valencia rather than gathered in one place; the Faculty of Philosophy and Education was built on the current campus ground in 1950, followed by the Faculty of Geography and History in 1978.
Why was the University of Valencia's library destroyed?
Soldiers under the French general Louis-Gabriel Suchet burned the university's 27,000-volume library during the Napoleonic Wars, and the library was damaged again by fire in 1938 during the Spanish Civil War.
When was Colegio Guadalaviar founded?
A group of parents inspired by the teachings of Vincent Ferrer founded Colegio Guadalaviar in 1959, in a building completed the year before that used exposed steel construction not previously seen in Valencia.
