Sagunto renews university offer with La Nau Gran for 2026-2027
The University of Valencia (UV) will again offer the La Nau Gran and La Nau Gran en Obert programmes in Sagunto for the 2026-2027 academic year, with courses on history, archaeology and heritage open to the public.
It is unusual for a town in the Camp de Morvedre district to keep its own university programming: the University of Valencia (UV — Universitat de València) maintains La Nau Gran sites outside its main campus in only three places across the Valencian Community, and Sagunto is one of them, alongside Gandia and Ontinyent. That status is renewed once again this year: for the 2026-2027 academic year, the city will again host UV's two senior-learning programmes, La Nau Gran and La Nau Gran en Obert, both built around history, archaeology, heritage and culture for people who want to keep learning later in life.
As in previous editions, classes will mostly take place at the Centro Cívico Antiguo Sanatorio, a civic centre in Puerto de Sagunto (coastal district) that has hosted the programme before. One detail that often goes unnoticed: the four La Nau Gran en Obert short courses do not require enrolment in the full three-year track. They are open to anyone interested in the subject, whether or not that person is already enrolled in La Nau Gran's formal, multi-year programme.
The four short courses are spread out across the academic year, roughly one every couple of months. November opens the calendar with a course exploring the archaeological parallels between Sagunto and the Italian city of Pompeii — titled 'Mare Nostrum, from Sagunto to Pompeii' — taught jointly by Amparo Mateo, Llorenç Alapont and Miguel Requena, and including a study trip to the Pompeii Archaeological Park itself, in Italy. Moving into 2027, January is set aside for a journey through the history of writing materials, from clay tablets to parchment, led by Ángel Mar; February brings an examination of the cultural rights tied to Sagunto's heritage, led by Ximo Revert; and April closes the cycle with a course on the archaeological transformation of the Grau Vell site between the 5th century BC and the 5th century AD, led by Carmen Aranegui.
Three of the four courses therefore look directly at Sagunto's own territory — Pompeii as a mirror of the local Roman past, Grau Vell as the city's old Roman-era port, and heritage as a framework for cultural rights — while the fourth course, on ancient writing, gives the programme a broader, less local angle that still fits its historical focus.
Anyone wanting to join one of these four short courses will need to wait until 7 September. Registration is handled entirely online, opening at 9:00 that Monday and closing at 14:00 on Friday, 25 September, through the University of Valencia's official website for La Nau Gran en Obert.
The other programme, La Nau Gran, remains reserved for people over 55 who are looking for ongoing, multi-year university study rather than a single short course. Sagunto will keep its 'History, Archaeology and Heritage' pathway active, with registration opening on 15 September and places resolved strictly on a first-come, first-served basis; the university itself will contact accepted applicants once the registration period closes. Because this second registration window opens two weeks after the one for the short courses, residents interested in both offers can apply to each of them without the dates overlapping.
On the financial side, every course — both La Nau Gran itself and the La Nau Gran en Obert short courses — costs €210.54. The paperwork required varies depending on the stage of study: first-year students must email naugransagunt@uv.es a completed registration form, a bank direct-debit order, a copy of their national ID document (DNI) and a passport-style photo; students continuing into their second or third year only need to submit the registration form, adding a new direct-debit order only if they have switched banks since the previous year.
Questions about either programme can be resolved in two ways: by calling the University of Valencia on 963 983 800, or by contacting Sagunto City Council's Department of University, Science and Innovation on 962 655 886.
According to Sagunto City Council, with additional data from the University of Valencia on how the Nau Gran en Obert programme works.