Valencia. Norte station (Estación del Norte)

The Norte station of Valencia (Estación del Norte map) serves a commuter line and the line of passenger transportation over medium and long distances. Through the station annually hosts more than 14 million passengers, 11 million of which are on the commuter line.  I arrived here  from Castellón de La Plana yesterday (the panorama from my previous visit to Valencia in may 2013).

The word "Norte" means not "North" as you might think, actually the name of a company, which founded in 1858, built and exploited the station before the nationalization of railways in 1941.

In 1851, the company Norte build a railway line with a length of 6 km, connecting the city centre with the port area of El Grao (El Grao) . A classic station building decorated with Doric columns was built near the town hall square by the project of engineers of Gamesa and Beatty Domingo Cardinal (James Beatty, Domingo Cardenal) and opened on 21 March 1952.

In 1854 he was commissioned a second line connecting Valencia with Gateway, five years later opened another one at Almanza, and in 1865, with the start line of the Madrid-Tarragona-Barcelona, Valencia became one of its most important nodes.

By the early twentieth century the old station did not satisfy the requirements of increased passenger traffic, and the location was not very successful and the company Norte attended to the construction of a new zeleznodoroznogo node.

Project in the art Nouveau style was designed by architect Demetrio Ribes (Demetrio Ribes, sleduyushi his work was the reconstruction of the the North station in Barcelona) and, in 1906, and August 2, 1907 was laid the first stone.

Station, inaugurated August 8, 1917, had a total area of 15 thousand square meters, the platforms were percreta steel arch structure with a height of 24.5 meters, according to the project Grasset Enrique (Enrique Grasset).

the interior of the building was used glazurovannaja ceramic tiles and mosaics, vypolnennye Jose Mongrell (Jose Mongrell). Rooms are decorated with majolica of Valencia motifs — landscapes, scenes from life.

In the lobby, at ticket offices, in the space between the Windows, are mosaics with an inscription "good luck" in different languages.

lower part of the walls closed with wooden panels, decorated with ceramic bas-reliefs with floral patterns typical of art Nouveau.

Since 1961, the station declared a historic monument, and since 1983, entered in the register of the cultural heritage of Spain (Bien de Interés Cultural).