Bilbao travel guide

Top 10 sights in Bilbao

Ranked by Wikipedia language editions — proven fame.

1. 

   1© Naotake Murayama · CC BY 2.0

   Guggenheim Museum Bilbao

   Frank Gehry's titanium building of 1997, which drew a million visitors in its first year to a declining industrial port and gave planners the phrase Bilbao effect. Koons's flower-covered Puppy sits outside and has become as photographed as the museum.

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2. 

   2© Patxi952 · CC BY-SA 3.0 es

   St. James' Cathedral

   The cathedral of Bilbao, a fourteenth-century Gothic church on the pilgrim route along the coast to Santiago, with a cloister and a pilgrims' door. It was the parish church of the old town before the city had a bishop of its own.

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3. 

   3© MuseoBBAABilbao · CC BY-SA 3.0

   Bilbao Fine Arts Museum

   The second most visited museum in the Basque Country, with ten thousand works — Basque painting, Spanish old masters including El Greco and Goya, and a modern collection. Serious visitors to Bilbao rate it above the Guggenheim, quietly.

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4. 

   4© Igerrak · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Church of San Antón

   A church of the fifteenth century on the riverbank in the old town, dedicated to Anthony the Great. It and the bridge beside it appear on the city's coat of arms, which makes it the emblem of Bilbao.

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   Basilica of Begoña

   A basilica on the hill above the old town, dedicated to the patron of Biscay, and reached from the streets below by a stair of three hundred and thirteen steps. Pilgrims have come to it since the sixteenth century and Athletic Bilbao's trophies are brought to it.

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6. 

   6© josu.orbe · CC BY-SA 2.0

   Chavarri Palace

   A Flemish-style mansion of the early twentieth century on the Plaza Elíptica, built for an industrialist and modelled on the merchant houses of Antwerp. No two of its windows are the same, which is the sort of thing money did in Bilbao then.

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7. 

   7© Ander Abadia Zallo · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Butrón

   A castle at Gatika that began as a medieval tower house and was rebuilt in the 1880s as a neo-Gothic fantasy, with pointed turrets borrowed from Bavaria. It was never really lived in and is now used for events.

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8. 

   8© Tommie Hansen · CC BY 3.0

   Abando

   The district covering most of central Bilbao on the left bank, and the only one of the eight that is entirely built up. The nineteenth-century grid, the station, the Fine Arts Museum and the Guggenheim are all in it.

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9. 

   9© Zarateman · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Plaza de Toros de Bilbao

   The bullring of Bilbao, holding about fourteen thousand, whose season is concentrated in the Semana Grande in August. A bullfighting museum is attached, and the practice is contested in the Basque Country as elsewhere in Spain.

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10. 

    10© Tereajuria · CC BY-SA 3.0

    Alhóndiga Bilbao

    A wine and goods warehouse of 1909 converted by Philippe Starck and reopened in 2010 as a cinema, library, gym and exhibition space. Its forty-three columns are each designed differently, and the glass-bottomed rooftop pool is visible from below.

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Popular tickets & tours in Bilbao

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1. 

   1© Stegop · CC BY-SA 3.0

   Plaza Nueva

   A neoclassical square designed in 1821 and opened in 1851, closed on all four sides by arcaded buildings and entered through arches. Its bars have the best pintxos in the old town and a flea market fills it on Sunday mornings.

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2. 

   2© PA · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Mercado de la Ribera

   A market of 1929 on the riverbank beside the old town, with ten thousand square metres of floor and stained glass along the front — for years described as the largest covered market in Europe. Its ground floor is now as much bar as market.

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3. 

   3© Fernando Pascullo · CC BY 2.5

   Begoña

   A district on the slope of Artxanda, an independent municipality until 1925, whose basilica gives it its name. The funicular to the top of the hill starts from its lower edge and gives the best view of the city.

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   Bilbao's Iron Ring

   The line of defences ringing Bilbao in Spain. The Basque government threw it up during the civil war to hold off the Nationalist advance on the northern front, in layers of bunkers, tunnels and trenches; an engineer defected with the plans and it fell in a day.

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5. 

   5© Xabier · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Abandoibarra

   A district on the riverfront of Abando in Bilbao in Spain. Since the mid-1990s it has been the main axis of the city's regeneration after deindustrialisation, and the Guggenheim stands on it.

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   Biscay Foral Delegation Palace

   An eclectic palace of 1900 on the Gran Vía, the seat of the executive of the Biscay provincial government — the legislature meets separately at Gernika, which matters in Basque politics. Its interiors are heavily gilded and open on limited days.

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7. 

   7© Zarateman · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Doña Casilda Iturrizar park

   A park of 1907 named after the widow who gave the land, and for decades the only green space in Bilbao. The Fine Arts Museum stands in it, and its pond, bandstand and plane trees make it the city's front garden.

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   Euskal Museoa

   The Basque archaeological, ethnographic and historical museum, opened in 1921 in a baroque Jesuit college. Its most striking object is the Mikeldi idol, an Iron Age stone animal with a disc between its legs whose meaning nobody has established.

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9. 

   9© Vanbasten 23 · CC BY-SA 3.0

   Errekalde

   A district on the southern edge of Bilbao whose name means beside the stream in Basque, made up of five neighbourhoods of working-class housing built for the steel and shipyard workforce.

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10. 

    10© Etxaburu · CC BY-SA 4.0

    Larreinetako funikularra

    A funicular of 1926 climbing more than 300 metres out of the Trapagaran valley to the village of Larreineta, built to serve the iron workings in the hills above Bilbao. It still runs on its original alignment and is among the steepest lines in Spain.

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