Living in En Corts, Valencia: a neighborhood guide

Living in En Corts

En Corts (play_arrow) is a small, dense barrio in the north of Quatre Carreres, the district on Valencia's southeastern side. It is a near-rectangle bounded by Avenida de Peris i Valero to the north, Carrer dels Sapadors to the east, Avenida de la Plata to the south and Avenida d'Ausiàs March to the west, with Avenida del Doctor Waksman running through the middle.

The name is the same in Castilian and Valencian: En Corts in both, which is unusual in a city where most barrios carry two spellings. The one street you will see written two ways is its eastern edge, Carrer dels Sapadors in Valencian and Calle Zapadores in Castilian.

The name comes from a fountain. Local histories record a spring south of Russafa in 1424 that belonged to Francesc Corts, so it was known as the Font d'en Corts (play_arrow), and the track leading to it became the Carrera de la Font d'en Corts. "En" is the old Valencian honorific placed before a man's name, roughly "Master" or "Don", so the name means "Master Corts's fountain". That carrera is one of the four country roads that gave Quatre Carreres, "four roads", its name, and it ran along what is now Carrer dels Sapadors.

The land was farmland belonging to the old town of Russafa until 1877, when Russafa and its huerta were absorbed into the municipality of Valencia. Building began in the 1960s and the barrio is now fully urban; no trace of the fountain survives beyond the street names.

According to the Ajuntament's municipal register, 12,337 people lived in En Corts on 1 January 2025, on just 36.4 hectares. That density is the barrio's character: mid-rise blocks from the 1960s and 1970s on a tight grid, ground-floor shops on most streets and very little open space inside the boundary itself.

Transport: metro line 10 stops at Amado Granell-Montolivet, just across Carrer dels Sapadors on the eastern side, and at Russafa, a short walk north of Avenida de Peris i Valero. The large Policía Nacional compound on Carrer dels Sapadors, the old sappers' barracks, is the barrio's biggest single landmark.

Trade-offs: the streetscape is plain and parking is tight, and you will walk out of the barrio for green space. In return you get everyday shops on the doorstep and Russafa to the north, with Montolivet and Malilla as neighbours to the east and west.