Only book Valencia for the middle of March if you want to be at Las Fallas. From 15 to 19 March the festival takes over the whole city, with gunpowder at lunchtime, streets closed to traffic, crowds into the small hours and, on the last night, hundreds of bonfires. For quiet streets and an easy table at dinner, come in the first ten days of March, or wait for April.
If you are going, sort out the hotel first. Central hotels in Ciutat Vella and Eixample fill months ahead for festival week, and rates climb steeply. With so many streets shut to cars, stay within walking distance of Plaza del Ayuntamiento.
An early-March trip still catches part of it. The mascletà, a deafening daytime barrage of firecrackers, goes off in Plaza del Ayuntamiento at two o'clock every day from 1 to 19 March. The square fills up, so be there an hour ahead, and bring earplugs, especially for children. Until the middle of the month the Exposició del Ninot runs at the Museu de les Ciències: hundreds of figures from the fallas on show, and a public vote on which one is spared the fire.
The monuments go up on the night of 15 March. Spend the 16th walking the neighbourhoods to see them finished.
On 17 and 18 March the Ofrenda fills the afternoons and evenings, as thousands of falleros carry flowers to Plaza de la Virgen for the cloak of a towering figure of the Virgen de los Desamparados. Late on the 18th the Nit del Foc, the festival's biggest firework display, goes up over the Paseo de la Alameda. Between events, eat buñuelos de calabaza, pumpkin fritters dunked in thick hot chocolate, from the street stalls.
The 19th is the cremà. The children's fallas burn first, in the early evening, then the main monuments later that night, with the falla in Plaza del Ayuntamiento last of all and in front of the biggest crowd. To watch a monument burn from close range, choose a smaller falla in your own neighbourhood.