Toy Museum and “L’Estació” Art Centre, Marqués del Campo Street, Glorieta del País Valencià, Església de l’Assumpció (Church of the Assumption), Town Hall, Ethnological Museum, Church of Sant Antoni

*NOTE: The Castle and the Archaeological Museum are a part of the historic centre but given their importance and the time it takes to visit them we have presented them in a different route.

If we start at the Tourist Office we can first visit the Toy Museum, which is very near the Tourist Office, in the building where the old Dénia-Carcaixent train station once used to be. In the ground floor you’ll find the L’Estació Art Centre with temporary exhibitions. In the first floor you’ll find the Toy Museum with an interesting collection belonging to the local early 20th c. toy industry.

Metal toys and, above all, wooden toys are characteristic of that period’s toy production, which produced from a fleet of cars and pedal planes and other engines with wheels, including sail boats, lorries reproducing the period’s big land companies, wooden kitchens, bowling or ring games, etc.

After the visit to the museum, we’ll carry on to the city’s main thoroughfare only a few metres away. Marques de Campos Street, the city’s Main Street, can be easily pinpointed thanks to the big plane trees on each side of the street. If we look on our right our sight we’ll meet the sea, if we carry on to the left our steps we’ll take us to a square known as the Glorieta del País Valencià.

Marqués de Campos Street owes its name to Mr. José Campos, a 19th c. person of mark, who carried out great improvements for the city, such as opening a gas factory for lighting, the opening of the Dénia-Carcaixent railroad and the opening of the Port Works Society.

The 19th c. building known as the Hostal del Comercio (Commerce Inn) can still be admired as well as other outstanding trading companies. The 19th century city’s municipal market also stood in the Glorieta del País Valencià.

Marqués de Campos Street closes to the traffic on weekends and holidays and becomes an enjoyable pedestrian walk during those days.

Furthermore, it is the place where such memorable events such as the Flower Offering take place during the bonfire celebrations known as les Falles, the carriage cortège celebrated during the Festivities in Honour of the Most Holy Blood (Santíssima Sang), the entrada dels bous (entry of bulls with bulls) running in the middle of the street during the celebrated fiesta of Bous a la mar(bulls to the sea), declared of National Tourist Interest and also the setting of the Gala Cortège during the fiesta known as Moros i Cristians, (Moors and Christians) and other events, which are held all the year round.

If we ascend Cop Street (pedestrian) we’ll reach the Plaça de la Constitució, (Constitution Square) with the Església de l’Assumpció (Church of the Assumption) on the right and the Town Hall in front.

The Church of the Assumption is of baroque measured style (18h c.) and it is on the spot where the old Sant Roc Chapel stood. It is built in rubblework and bricks, although ashlar stone is used for the socle. It has a two-sided covered roof and we must pinpoint the central blue-tiled dome over an octagonal tambour. It has a façade with two doors: the access to the temple and the Chapel of Our Lady of the Rosary or St Roc. It has a Latin cross plan inscribed in a rectangle. It has a nave with four sections, covered with a barrel vault with front tiles and aisle chapels crowned with circular domes, linked to each other by wide passages, a wide nave with a half orange dome and a presbytery in two sections flanked by two enclosures: a sacristy and the Chapel of the Communion.

We must point out the polychrome sculpture of Our Lady of the Assumption, in the central niche and, to its sides, the two Vincents –Sant Vicent Ferrer and Sant Vicent Màrtir- the two patron saints of the city of Valencia, as well as frescoes from the late 18th or early 19th centuries, which can be seen on the nave’s and domes pendentives, representing the evangelists and the Saint Fathers of the Western Church. As far as silver and goldsmithery are concerned, the most outstanding piece is a processional cross from the second quarter of the 17th c.

Regarding the Town Hall building please pay attention on the six solid half-pointed arches as well as the large windows in the two upper floors. Two Roman inscriptions can be read in the façade and the access stairway to Hospital Street originally found in the forum of Dianium. If we were to go up the stairway next to the Town Hall we’d reach the castle of Dénia (please check the Castle-Archaeological Museum Route).

Once the visit to the Church of the Assumption is over and having observed the impressive Town Hall building we’ll proceed down the staircase on Plaça de la Constitució (Constitution Square) and we take a short side street: Cavallers St.

Immediately, we’ll find the city’s Ethnological Museum, housed in a typical bourgeois mansion built in the second quarter of the 19th c., made up of a ground, first and second floor. It opens from 10.30 a.m. to 1 p.m. and from 4p.m. to 7 p.m. every day except Sundays afternoons and Mondays; the entrance is free.

In this museum, 19th c. Dénia is on show and this golden age came thanks to the dry raisin trade. Inside, we’ll find an interesting collection including clothing, working tools and utensils from that period.

Cavallers Street, together with Major, SantJosep and Loreto streets, still preserve an interesting collection of houses built in the late 18th and throughout the 19th centuries, related to the wealth of the bourgeoisie, which arose around the dry raisin trade.

Some of the houses’ doors have considerable widths, which call our attention. The reason is they used to be the houses’ rear doors and the inhabitants would cross them with their carriages (some fine examples of wide doors are found in Sant Pasqual and Sant Antoni alleys.

The Convent of the Augustinian Nuns or Convent of Our Lady of Loreto is in Loreto Street, parallel to Cavallers Street. This convent, inaugurated in 1604, is a discalced Augustinian Nun foundation.

If we go back towards Plaça de la Constitució (Constitution Square) and we take la Mar Street, we’ll go past the Morand warehouse, a dry raisin warehouse, where dry raisin exports were classified and packaged for exportation in the 19th century.

It has a rectangular plan and a two-sided Arabic tiled roof. It has two floors that are marked in the façade by a continuous cornice. In the first floor, there are two segmental arches with diagonal lattices. The ground floor has undergone several transformations due to the commercial use of the building but it stills conserves some original doors, which also have a segmental arch.

Once we have gone through la Mar Street, we’ll find Càndida Carbonell Street on our right, where there is an old dry raisin warehouse, which once belonged to the English company, “Cooperative Wholesale Society”, in Càndida Carbonell Street corner Plaça del Convent (Convent Square).

This building is a fine example of the role played by English companies in dray raisin exports. The first floor has thirty-one latticed windows with a segmented arch. The ground floor has doors of a great size, of which some are still in their original state whilst the others have been modified due to the different uses given to the building both in the present time and the past.

There are three windows still bearing the company’s initials “C.W.S.” on the façade in Càndida Carbonell Street.