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In 1865, the city walls were demolished and Valencia began to grow beyond the walls of the medieval city to accommodate the waves of people leaving the countryside to work in the factories. Improved streets and squares, the new bridges over the Turia River, the construction of the Central Market, the Colom Market and the North Station, the installation of electricity and drinking water… together with the annexation of the surrounding municipalities, made Valencia a new city, which, in less than 80 years, grew from 65,000 to 235,000 inhabitants.

Nevertheless, at the end of the 19th century, the economy was still predominantly agrarian, based on the crops grown in the city’s surrounding market gardens: oranges, wine, rice and horticultural products. Valencia’s market gardens, so fertile and vast, with more than 14,000 hectares of smallholdings criss-crossed by irrigation ditches, roads and small farmhouses, are the source that supplies fresh produce to the Valencian and international markets. But, above all, they create, together with the city, a unique landscape that constitutes the heritage of the Valencian people.

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