A Valencian novelist gave Hollywood one of its biggest silent hits and then a Technicolor remake, and the house he had built on the city’s beach charges 2 euros to see his spectacles and his inkwell. The Casa Museo Blasco Ibáñez is the rebuilt seaside villa of novelist Vicente Blasco Ibáñez, run as a municipal museum charging 2 euros. It stands on the sand at Malvarrosa, closed on Mondays and free on Sundays.
Can you visit the Blasco Ibáñez house in Valencia? The Casa Museo Blasco Ibáñez opens Tuesday to Saturday for 2 euros, and Sundays and public holidays are free. It shuts on Mondays and for an hour from 14:00. The building is not the 1902 villa: the council calls it the rebuilt chalet.
The novelist filmed twice in Hollywood
Vicente Blasco Ibáñez wrote The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, which Visit València describes as internationally recognised and adapted twice by Hollywood: once with Rudolph Valentino in the lead and again with Glenn Ford. Blood and Sand came from the same pen.
That reach explains the strangest exhibit in the house, which is not an object but a shelf. The museum keeps an extensive library of editions of his works in different languages, and it is the most direct measure available of how far a novelist writing about Valencian fishermen and rice fields actually travelled.
The Casa Museo Blasco Ibáñez is the rebuilt seaside villa of novelist Vicente Blasco Ibáñez, run as a municipal museum charging 2 euros with free entry on Sundays. Everything else in the collection is domestic by comparison, which is the point of visiting a writer’s house rather than a literary archive.
Two euros, and a gap in the middle of the day
General admission is 2 euros and the reduced rate 1 euro, which the council sets for groups of more than ten, students in formal education, over-65s and pensioners, while Visit València adds children aged 7 to 12 and holders of the Carnet Jove. Sundays and public holidays are free, as at the other museums that charge nothing.
The timetable splits the day where several other municipal buildings do not. Tuesday to Saturday it opens at 10:00, shuts for a full hour at 14:00 and then runs on until 19:00. Sundays and holidays keep the morning block alone, and Monday is closed outright.
Two municipal pages disagree on the Sunday closing time. Infociudad and Visit València both say 14:00; the seasonal listing on valencia.es, the one covering 15 March to 15 October, says 15:00. Planning around the earlier of the two is the only version that cannot go wrong.
The building is a rebuild
Two statements circulate and both are true of different things. Visit València dates the commission: the author had it built in 1902 on Malvarrosa beach. The Ayuntamiento de València describes what stands there now with one word, calling it the rebuilt chalet, and publishes no date for that rebuilding.
The architect named on the municipal file for the building is Vicente Bochons. It is the only technical name the council attaches to the house, and it belongs to the current structure rather than to the 1902 villa.
What was not rebuilt is the contents. The council lists everyday objects from his family surroundings, works by artist friends of his and first editions of his publications, while Visit València adds original furniture, family portraits, correspondence, manuscripts and three items that anchor the writing room: his chair, his glasses and his inkwell.
What to know before you go
- It is on the Valencia Tourist Card free list, so the card covers it, though 2 euros will not decide anyone’s purchase.
- Walk south along the promenade and you reach the Cabanyal, the other plan in this part of the city that does not depend on the weather.
- The building has three floors and a garden, of which the ticket covers the museum floor; the other two are an assembly hall and a research centre.
- It is the only municipal museum on the sand, which makes 2 euros a genuine fallback when a morning at the city beaches turns grey.
- Sunday is free and short. Work to the 14:00 closing time, the figure two of the three municipal pages give.
- Do not plan it for 14:30. The one-hour midday break falls there Tuesday to Saturday, the same pattern the Rice Museum and the Almudín keep, while the Lonja and the towers run straight through.
- Monday is closed, along with 1 and 6 January, 1 May and 25 December, on the council’s own listing.
Two euros for a rebuilt house with the original spectacles still on the desk and the sea across the road.