Long before the coming of the Romans to Spain, the territory of what is now Valencia was inhabited by Iberian peoples. Greeks, Romans, Visigoths and then Muslims followed to add their cultures to the land. According to the Roman historian Livy, Roman soldiers occupied the site of Valencia in 138 BC. Pompey the Great partly destroyed the city in 75 BC during his campaign against the armies of the rebel leader Quintus Sertorius. Valencia remained under Roman control until AD 413, when it was captured by the Visigoths. The Moors took it from the Visigoths in 714, and in 1021 they made it the capital of the independent kingdom of Valencia. Except for a short lived conquest by El Cid in 1094, the population of this part of the Peninsula was fundamentally Muslim by the early Middle Ages. The city later was recaptured for Islam by the Almoravids in 1102.

The basic origin of Valencia as a national community with a political identity of its own goes back to the year 1238, when King James I of Aragon conquered the city of Valencia. However, he did not annex it to the kingdom of Aragon or Catalunya, but made it into an autonomous kingdom within the group of States under his rule. Despite the predominantly Catalan nature of the conquest, Valencia is a self-governing State with an identity of its own and a special parliament and institutions.

During the 15th and 16th centuries, Valencia became one of the major economic powers on the Mediterranean seaboard. It was the time of the Valencian siglo de oro or Golden Age, which was characterized by splendor in the arts at the hands of Joanot Martorell, author of Tirant lo Blanc, the first modern European novel, Ausias March, Roig de Corella, Isabel de Villena, Jordi de Sant Jordi and Jaume Roig, among others.

At the beginning of the 18th century, in the War of Succession, the Valencian people took the side of the Archduke of Austria while most of the nobility were in favor of Philip V. The success of the latter brought about the abolition of local charters and the end of the region's traditional autonomy. After the fall of Madrid to Franco in the Spanish Civil War, the capital of the Republic was moved to Valencia. The city suffered from the blockade and siege by Franco’s forces. The postwar period was hard for Valencians. During the Franco years, speaking or teaching Valencian was prohibited; using the language at all was subject to criminal penalties. When democracy was restored, the Land of Valencia was given its present Autonomous Statutes in 1982, with the city as its capital.