Valencia was the last city we visited before Ryland was born, and the architectural highlight of the trip was the City of Arts & Sciences. It's a complex of cultural buildings sited at the eastern end of the old Turia riverbed, now a sunken garden which meanders through the city. A surreal setting for these incredible structures, which helps provide the headspace to fully appreciate them. Designed by Santiago Calatrava and Félix Candela, the first main building was completed in 1998 and the last – the opera house with its gravity-defying floating feather – in 2005.