A friar's zeal built a university, a soldier burned its books
Last reviewed 16 September 2026 · A three-minute read · 100 BC–now
Valencia's ground carries a long span: Roman Valentia beneath the streets, a city conquered by James I of Aragon in 1238, a university requested of the pope in 1246 and finally chartered in 1499, and a school founded in 1959 on ground close by.
The short answer
Colegio Guadalaviar, an international school in Valencia, was founded in 1959 by parents inspired by the teachings of Vincent Ferrer, on ground close to the University of Valencia, whose own statutes of 1499 followed a request King James I of Aragon made to the pope in 1246.
Mestalla — 2012 · Maxim Karpinskiy · CC BY-SA 3.0
1246 to 1499
A papal request waits two and a half centuries
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 fire burned the university's library twice
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 gathered on one 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 founded a school on the same avenue
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.
Sourced records, high and medium confidence. Era background is marked as such.
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.
Era background — not a record of this tile · Wikidata
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.
The University of Valencia's newer faculties were rising on the same stretch of ground, with the Faculty of Philosophy and Education built in 1950 and the Faculty of Geography and History in 1978, close to where the school was founded in 1959.
When was Colegio Guadalaviar founded?
A group of parents founded Colegio Guadalaviar in 1959, inspired by the teachings of the Dominican preacher Vincent Ferrer; its building had been finished the year before.
Who founded the University of Valencia?
The magistrates of Valencia passed the founding statutes on April 30, 1499, after the Dominican preacher Vincent Ferrer pushed the city to act on a request King James I of Aragon had made to Pope Innocent IV in 1246.
What happened to the University of Valencia's library?
Soldiers under French general Louis-Gabriel Suchet burned the university's library of 27,000 volumes during the Napoleonic Wars, and a fire in 1938 during the Spanish Civil War damaged the rebuilt library a second time.
What made Colegio Guadalaviar's building notable?
Its building, finished in 1958, used exposed steel in a way no one in Valencia had built with before.
