Qualla: Manises https://qualla.com/manises en-us © 2026 Bendyline Thu, 20 Aug 2026 16:38:46 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_m/e/z/p/8/manises-wk/hero-small.webp Qualla: Manises https://qualla.com/manises Manises: Introduction https://qualla.com/manises/ Photo credit StellarD, CC BY-SA 4.0. Most travellers to Valencia touch down in Manises without ever learning its name — it is simply where the airport is. But long before there were runways, this small town of some thirty thousand people was famous across a continent for something made of earth and fire: ceramics so fine, glazed in blue and shimmering gold, that they reached the tables of royal courts throughout medieval Europe. Seven centuries on, the kilns of Manises are still lit.

Read more: Manises on Qualla

Image: StellarD | CC BY-SA 4.0

]]> Mon, 20 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/e/z/p/8/manises-wk/ezp8-manises-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Manises: Earth, Fire, and Seven Centuries https://qualla.com/manises/ Photo credit Museo de Cerámica de Manises, CC BY-SA 4.0. People have lived on this ground since Roman times, but Manises became a town under the Arabs, who turned it into a centre for making ceramics. That craft has been practised here for at least seven hundred years, long enough to become the town's whole identity. Where other places...

Read more: Manises on Qualla

Image: Museo de Cerámica de Manises | CC BY-SA 4.0

]]> Mon, 20 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/e/z/p/8/manises-wk/ezp8-manises-earth-fire-and-seven-centuries.mp3 0:06 2 full Manises: Opus Aureum: The Golden Work https://qualla.com/manises/ Photo credit Lliberpau, CC0. The secret was lustre. Borrowing a technique that had travelled from the Islamic world, Manises potters learned to fire their glazes so that a thin film of metal settled into the surface, catching the light like beaten gold — the golden colour coming, we now know, from vanishingl...

Read more: Manises on Qualla

Image: Lliberpau | CC0

]]> Mon, 20 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/e/z/p/8/manises-wk/ezp8-manises-opus-aureum-the-golden-work.mp3 0:06 3 full Manises: Sought by Popes and Princes https://qualla.com/manises/ Photo credit 19Tarrestnom65, CC BY-SA 4.0. The fame spread astonishingly far. In 1383 the Valencian friar Francesc Eiximenis wrote that the golden work of Manises had so enchanted the world that the pope, the cardinals, and the princes of Christendom all sought it out. By the fifteenth century, Manises was the leading pro...

Read more: Manises on Qualla

Image: 19Tarrestnom65 | CC BY-SA 4.0

]]> Mon, 20 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/e/z/p/8/manises-wk/ezp8-manises-sought-by-popes-and-princes.mp3 0:06 4 full Manises: The Craft That Survived the Conquest https://qualla.com/manises/ Photo credit Carlesmari, CC BY 3.0. That a Muslim master like Zuleima was still shaping the town's reputation a century and a half after the Christian conquest is no accident. When King James I of Aragon took the region in the 1230s, reaching Manises in 1237, he allowed the Muslim residents to remain — and, crucial...

Read more: Manises on Qualla

Image: Carlesmari | CC BY 3.0

]]> Mon, 20 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/e/z/p/8/manises-wk/ezp8-manises-the-craft-that-survived-the-conquest.mp3 0:06 5 full Manises: Where Others' Kilns Went Cold https://qualla.com/manises/ Photo credit 19Tarrestnom65, CC BY-SA 4.0. In many nearby towns the potteries eventually fell silent. Manises never did. Today it is Spain's largest ceramics-producing centre, with more than a hundred workshops and factories inside the town and another fifty in the villages around it. A visitor can still buy handmade piec...

Read more: Manises on Qualla

Image: 19Tarrestnom65 | CC BY-SA 4.0

]]> Mon, 20 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/e/z/p/8/manises-wk/ezp8-manises-where-others-kilns-went-cold.mp3 0:06 6 full