Bilbao travel guide

Bilbao is the capital of ­Vizcaya province and was once the ­industrial heartland of the Basque Country. The spectacular Museo Guggenheim Bilbao put Bilbao firmly on the cultural map and launched the entire Basque Country into a rebirth of general optimism.

Bilbao's history

The earliest settlements here are said to have been made near the present 15th-century Iglesia de San Antón in the Atxuri district along the Ribera east of the Siete Calles, the ‘Seven Streets’ of the Casco Viejo, or Old Town. The prosperous Casco Viejo was pillaged by the French during the Peninsular War, and much of it was destroyed in the Carlist Wars, but narrow streets and a number of pre-19th-century structures remain. In the 1870s, at the end of the Second Carlist War, Bilbao began to exploit its natural iron deposits and industrialise in a big way. By the end of the century, half the Spanish merchant fleet came from Basque shipyards, much of its steel industry was located near Bilbao, and Basque bankers and businessmen wielded great financial power.

Rejuvenation

Bilbao reinvented itself with the opening in 1997 of a branch of the Guggenheim art gallery, in a building designed by the Canadian-American architect Frank Gehry. It also has a thriving central district with broad boulevards and leafy parks, a metro system designed by Norman Foster, and the historic Casco Viejo (Old Quarter).