Dianne Boardman takes us round the beautiful city of Bilbao and shows why it is well worth a visit.
WHEN my husband David suggested a trip to Bilbao in northern Spain, all I knew was that they had a Guggenheim Museum.
Now, standing in front of a giant puppy, I realise there is much more to the place than I could have imagined.
Two decades ago, Bilbao was a lost cause, an abandoned shipyard with a decaying port and rundown centre.
Long gone were its glory days as a hub of Spanish trade and wealth, where merchants lived in stunning buildings and lavish displays were everywhere.
The decline was so bad that in the 1990s a council was set up to see what could be done. They pumped money into the city, aiming to turn it into a focus for culture and art.
It was a huge risk, but they struck lucky with the promise of a Guggenheim gallery.
It was completed in 1997, and the astonishing ship-like structure became famous when it appeared in the 1999 James Bond film “The World Is Not Enough”.
The museum brought visitors from all over the world and their money helped to revive the city, enabling the old town to have a makeover, too, with all the elegant old buildings cleaned and the streets pedestrianised to create beautiful squares.
New galleries opened, artists moved in, shops and bars appeared, and the city was reborn.
Today, Bilbao rivals Paris and Amsterdam for the latest stores and fancy restaurants, but it also has hundreds of smaller bars and artisan shops.
There are tiled streets and beautiful parks filled with fountains and bright flowers, where children play and adults sip coffee.
A 1929 Art Nouveau market sits near a 19th-century City Hall, and even the metro stations, designed by Norman Foster, are works of art.
There’s so much to look at, whether a beautiful old palace or striking theatre, a stone lion on a building or a golden statue on a column.
Even the concrete and steel structures are magnificent, especially the reflections playing on the glass of the 165-metre Iberdrola Tower, the tallest building in Basque Country.
We begin with the cathedral. A waystation on the pilgrimage route to Santiago de Compostela further down the coast, this impressive Gothic building has been continuously improved since the 14th century, and a very detailed audio guide ensured we didn’t miss any
