It’s worth getting up early if you’re staying at the Balneario Las Arenas on the shoreline in Valencia’s Cabanyal district.

Stand under the hotel’s giant weeping fig tree just before dawn and you’ll be there as the sun comes up over the Mediterranean and hundreds of roosting birds wake up and chatter in the warming air.

It seems that everyone wants the chance to speak in Valencia. Barcelona, on the other coast, is questioning its future. Catalans are against mass tourism. Valencians, however, speak their own Catalan and believe the world should learn about their extraordinary city.

Loud and proud: The Art Nouveau Mercat de Colon in the city centre is a showcase for Valencian gastronomy

Loud and proud: The Art Nouveau Mercat de Colon in the city centre is a showcase for Valencian gastronomy

Often that means food, and they’ll point you to the twin Art Nouveau wonders of Mercat de Colon, the city centre market that is a showcase for Valencian gastronomy, and the teeming Mercat Central, where the stalls are piled with an astonishing array of produce and fantastically fresh fish.

Paella was invented in Valencia, and its main ingredient is the star attraction at the Rice Museum – just one of the many museums in a city that also celebrates lead soldiers, and, at the beautiful baroque palace of the Marquis de dos Aguas, silk and ceramics.

Do you want art? There are more than 1,000 works by Picasso at the Fundacio Bancaja, and there’s the world-class Valencia Institute of Modern Art as well as the Museum of Fine Arts, stuffed with Renaissance wonders and a room devoted to the city’s greatest artist, Joaquin Sorolla.

He created luminescent paintings of turn-of-the-19th-Century beach life in Cabanyal, a former fishing village on one of the best city beaches in Europe – more than a match for Marseilles or Barcelona – and behind the beach, much of the district is as Sorolla left it.

With its fine golden sand, La Malvarrosa is one of Valencia's most popular beaches

La Malvarrosa with its fine golden sandy sand is Valencia’s most famous beach.

Iconic: Paella is Valencia’s signature dish

Iconic: Paella is Valencia’s signature dish

In the perfectly named Plaza de los Hombres del Mar (Men of the Sea Square), the sundial painted on the wall of the stables – which housed the oxen that once pulled fishing boats from the sea – dates from 1895. In Casa Montana, Carrer de Josep Benlliure, time has been paused. Since 1836, local brandy, vermouth, and the Valencian anis called casalla are served here. You can upgrade to raciones for full-size meals. Book ahead.

Simple is best here, such as tomatoes, olive oil, crusty bread, stewed beans or the day’s sea catch, washed down with a white wine made from the Valencian Merseguera grape.

Then, continue north past brightly coloured holiday homes built in the early 20th century by wealthy Valencians. Each house is a unique ceramic masterpiece.

At the end of the street, Cabanyal gives way to the Malvarrosa – the street facing the beach. It will shine in eight hours of sunshine per day by April. If you need shade, visit the museum dedicated to Vicente Blasco Ibanez, a 20th Century writer. He was the author or dozens of books, and seemed to have had more enemies than he deserves. He was shot once by one of them but was saved by the bullet that lodged in his belt buckle. He was a star in Hollywood in 1920s where he launched the careers Rudolph Valentino, Greta Garbo, and others.

If that detour makes you hungry again, one of Valencia’s great food institutions is next door. Casa Carmela is home to the best paella, which is cooked over open wood fires. You can choose to have the seafood, rabbit, or snail version. But, you should start with the fresh sardines from the sea, dipped and fried in flour.

Futuristic: The City of Arts and Sciences features a science museum and opera house designed by Valencia’s star architect, Santiago Calatrava

Futuristic: The City of Arts and Sciences features a science museum and opera house designed by Valencia’s star architect, Santiago Calatrava

Pictured is Barrio Carmen where you’ll find bakeries selling pastel de boniato, the Valencian sweet potato and cinnamon pasty

Pictured is Barrio Carmen where you’ll find bakeries selling pastel de boniato, the Valencian sweet potato and cinnamon pasty

Valencia can cause havoc on your waistline. You can fight back by walking through Jardin del Turia. It is a large park in an ancient river bed that links the city centre and the sea.

It is also home to the futuristic City of Arts and Sciences, which features a science museum and opera house designed by Valencia’s star architect, Santiago Calatrava.

Valencia’s cathedral was begun in the 13th Century and contains the only Holy Grail – a cup said to have been used by Jesus at the Last Supper – to be revered by the Vatican.

Around a corner, the Horchateria Santa Catalina serves Valencia’s traditional drink, horchata, a milk made from crushed tiger nuts. The unsweetened version is popular, but possibly pointless as locals accompany it with sugared rolls called farton – which taste better than they sound.

Afterwards, slip into the narrow streets of the medieval Barrio Carmen, where you’ll find bakeries selling pastel de boniato, the Valencian sweet potato and cinnamon pasty livened with a dash of cazalla.

On Calle Cajeros, stop at Simple, a boutique specialising in Valencian crafts – this is where you’ll get your summer espadrilles.

Allow yourself to lose yourself until you reach the Central Market. Here, a model of a Parrot symbolizes the singing of Valencians about food. And once more, you’re underneath the birds.