Tuesday 25th February at 7 p.m. the book launching of Fiesta y urbanismo. Valencia en los siglos XVI y XVII (Partying and City Planning. Valencia in the 16th and 17th Centuries) By Desirée Juliana Colomer will take place at the Magna Room in La Nau Cultural Centre.

Antonio Ariño Villarroya, Vice-Principal for Culture and Sport; Luis Arciniega García, director of the Demetrio Ribes Chair; and Desirée Juliana Colomer, Doctor in History of Art and book’s author will intervene in the act.

The culture and heritage of a city are distinctive signs that give it uniqueness, define features of identity and condition its future. Something so obvious is sometimes forgotten when interventions are made on the architecture and urban morphology of the past and makes us lose an important part of the roots of certain places. Architectural works that were projected with a very defined objective, altered their meaning after reforms in which the spatial reorganisation prevailed. For example, the space adjacent to the Baroque facade of València's cathedral changed significantly after the opening of what is now known as Plaça de la Reina; and the demolition of the wall in 1865 completely transformed the urban image of the city and, with it, its historical perception. The work here presented proposes to analyse the formation of cities in their different stages as a means of recording, preserving and understanding them.