Basque Country Attractions

Frank Gehry's spectacular twisting titanium-clad modern art museum was one of the the most celebrated buildings of the 1990s. The graceful, sensuous curves, evocative of the ships that used to be ubiquitous along the docks of Bilbao, are covered in titanium squares, which resemble the scales of a fish and shimmer in the sunlight. In keeping with the maritime theme, appropriate for the setting, the skylights of the largest gallery (formerly known as the Fish gallery) are designed to look like the fins of fish. Many parts of the building are purely decorative, and don't serve any purpose. The permanent collection is not particularly impressive, but the museum always hosts at least one interesting temporary exhibit, frequently comprised of masterpieces from the other Guggenheim collections.

Bilbao Fine Arts Museum is an art museum located in the city of Bilbao, Spain. The building of the museum is located entirely inside the city's Doña Casilda Iturrizar park. It is the second largest and most visited museum in the Basque Country, after the Bilbao Guggenheim Museum. The museum is particularly notable for the lengthy period it covers (from the 12th century to the present day) and the extraordinary variety of art works acquired since its inception, the Bilbao Fine Arts Museum collection currently boasts more than six thousand works including paintings, sculptures, drawings, engravings and objects from the decorative arts.

Santiago Cathedral is a Catholic Cathedral in the city of Bilbao that was officially declared cathedral in 1950. Its origins probably date to well before the foundation of the city in 1300, when Bilbao was little more than a small enclave of fishermen. The temple is consecrated in honor of the apostle Saint James the Great (Santiago in Spanish), by virtue of being a point of transit for the pilgrims that followed the Northern branch of the Way of Saint James. Architecturally, the present building is a mixture of styles: from the 15th century Gothic of the cloister and the main vault, where of special interest are the cloister and the beautiful portal that gives access Correo street (Puerta del Angel), to the ostentatious Gothic Revival façade and spire. A curious custom is the addition of stone carvings of local merchants along the buttresses of the main vault. It should...

The Basilica of Begoña (or Basílica de Nuestra Señora de Begoña in Spanish) is a basilica in Bilbao, in Spain, dedicated to the patron saint of Biscay, the Virgin Begoña. Overlooking Bilbao, this is perhaps the most symbolic religious building in the city. Built in the 16th Century by Sancho Martinez de Arego, who was also responsible for the Iglesia San Anton. It is a basilica of three naves. During the first Carlista War, in 1835, the façade and the tower were destroyed. The present ones were designed Jose Maria Basterra and constructed between 1902 and 1907.