L'Oceanogràfic, Valencia (must see)

Set in the former Turia riverbed, L’Oceanogràfic is what happens when a city decides that a simple aquarium is not enough — it needs Europe’s largest one, wrapped in futuristic architecture, and filled with enough seawater to surprise Neptune himself...

Opened on February 14, 2003, it forms part of the City of Arts and Sciences and was designed by architect Félix Candela with engineers Alberto Domingo and Carlos Lázaro. Across its huge site, marine worlds unfold through underwater towers, tanks, gardens, and habitats representing the Mediterranean, the Arctic, tropical seas, temperate waters, islands, wetlands, the Red Sea, and more.

Inside, around 45,000 animals from some 500 species live here — sharks, rays, dolphins, penguins, sea lions, walruses, beluga whales, birds, reptiles, and plenty of smaller creatures doing their best not to be upstaged. The complex holds about 42 million liters of water, including a vast dolphinarium and a seven-million-liter ocean tank for sharks, rays, and other fish. Much of the seawater is pumped in from La Malva-Rosa beach, apparently to make sure that even the fish get a taste of local Valencia...

Architecturally, the place is just as memorable. Candela’s thin-shell concrete structures echo the sweeping hyperbolic parabola forms he used in his famous earlier creation, the Los Manantiales restaurant in Mexico City. In less technical terms: the roofs curve, swoop, and float, as if concrete suddenly remembered it could be elegant...

Today, L’Oceanogràfic is more than a spectacular aquarium. It's a full-scale journey through the planet’s marine life, a place where science, conservation, architecture, and wide-eyed staring all swim comfortably in the same tank...