8 Best Sights in Bilbao and the Basque Country, Spain

Officially named the Centro-Museo Vasco de Arte Contemporáneo, this former bus station is regarded as the third corner of the Basque modern art triangle, along with the Bilbao Guggenheim and San Sebastián's Chillida–Leku. The museum's permanent collection—including 20th- and 21st-century paintings and sculptures by Jorge Oteiza, Eduardo Chillida, Agustín Ibarrola, and Nestor Basterretxea, among others—makes it one of Spain's finest treasuries of contemporary art.

In Hernani, a 10-minute drive south of San Sebastián (close to both Martín Berasategui's restaurant in nearby Lasarte and the cider houses of the Astigarraga neighborhood, like Sidrería Petritegi), the Eduardo Chillida Sculpture Garden and Museum, in a 16th-century farmhouse, got a face-lift after years of neglect and finally reopened in 2019. It is a treat for anyone interested in contemporary art. The indoor-outdoor restaurant on the premises punches above its weight.

It's hard to overstate the importance of the Guggenheim museum, Frank Gehry’s architectural masterpiece of undulating titanium and chaotic, nature-inspired forms built on the riverfront. It all began when Guggenheim director Thomas Krens set out to find a venue for a major European museum and came up dry in Paris, Madrid, and other major cities. Having glumly accepted an invitation to Bilbao, Krens was out for a morning jog when he found what he was looking for—an empty riverside lot once occupied by shipyards and warehouses. He had a vision of a building that would symbolize Bilbao's macro-reconversion from steel to titanium, from heavy industry to art—and one that would be a nexus between the early-14th-century Casco Viejo and the 19th-century Ensanche, between the wealthy right bank and working-class left bank of the Nervión.

Frank Gehry's gleaming brainchild opened in 1997 and was hailed as "the greatest building of our time" by architect Philip Johnson and "a miracle" by Herbert Muschamp of the New York Times. At once suggestive of a silver-scaled fish and a mechanical heart, Gehry's sculpture in titanium, limestone, and glass echoes the Contemporary and Postmodern artworks it contains. The smoothly rounded jumble of surfaces and cylindrical shapes recalls Bilbao's shipbuilding and steel-manufacturing past, while transparent and reflective materials create a shimmering, futuristic luminosity. With the final section of La Salve Bridge over the Nervión folded into the structure, the Guggenheim is both a doorway to Bilbao and an urban forum: the atrium looks up into the center of town and across the river to the old quarter and the tranquil green hillsides of Artxanda, where livestock graze. Gehry achieved his goal of building a structure in which "you [could] feel your soul rise up."

The free audio guide offers an excellent synopsis of modern art, contemporary art, and the Guggenheim.

The collection, described by Krens as "a daring history of the art of the 20th century," consists of more than 250 works, most from the New York Guggenheim and the rest acquired by the Basque government. The second and third floors reprise the original Guggenheim collection of abstract expressionist, cubist, surrealist, and geometrical works. Legendary artists of the 20th century (including Kandinsky, Picasso, Ernst, Tàpies, Pollock, and Calder) are joined by more contemporary figures (Bruce Nauman, Txomin Badiola, Miquel Barceló, Jean-Michel Basquiat, and others). The ground floor is dedicated to large-format and installation work, some of which—like Richard Serra's Snake—was created specifically for the space. Claes Oldenburg's Knife Ship, Robert Morris's walk-in Labyrinth, and pieces by Joseph Beuys, Christian Boltanski, Richard Long, Jenny Holzer, and others round out the heavyweight division in one of the largest galleries in the world.

Expect lines on holidays and weekends, especially late morning through early afternoon. Cut the wait time by buying tickets ahead of time online or around closing time for the following day.

This museum 12 km (7½ miles) east of Pamplona commemorates Jorge Oteiza (1908–2003), the father of modern Basque art. In his seminal treatise, Quosque tandem, Oteiza called for Basque artists to find their own aesthetic and not acquiesce to the Spanish canon. Rejecting ornamentation in favor of essential form, he created the school of artists from which Eduardo Chillida (1924–2002) emerged. The earth-tone concrete slab of a building housing the museum was Oteiza's home for more than two decades.

Spain's number-three fine arts museum, bested only by Madrid's Prado and Seville's Museo de Bellas Artes, features works from every Spanish school and movement from the 12th through the 20th centuries. The collection of Flemish, French, Italian, and Spanish paintings includes works by El Greco, Francisco de Goya y Lucientes, Diego Velázquez, José Ribera, Paul Gauguin, and Antoni Tàpies. One large and excellent section traces developments in 20th-century Spanish and Basque art alongside works by better-known European contemporaries, such as Fernand Léger and Francis Bacon. Look for Zuloaga's famous portrait of La Condesa Mathieu de Moailles and Joaquín Sorolla's portrait of Basque philosopher Miguel de Unamuno. Expect to spend at least three hours here.

Paintings by Ribera, Picasso, and the Basque painter Zuloaga adorn the walls of this exuberant baroque building, whose collection spans from the 18th to the 20th century.

Designed by celebrity architect Rafael Moneo, this contemporary art museum and event space is on the University of Navarra campus. It has an exceptional photograph collection dating to the birth of photography as an art form, and the permanent art collection features classic works by Rothko, Picasso, Kandinsky, and Tàpies.

In a 16th-century monastery behind the parte vieja, to the right (northeast) of the church of Santa María, the former chapel, now a lecture hall, was painted by José María Sert (1876–1945). Creator of notable works in Barcelona's city hall, London's Tate Gallery, and New York's Waldorf-Astoria hotel, Sert's characteristic tones of gray, gold, violet, and earthy russet enhance the sculptural power of his work here, which portrays events from Basque history. The museum displays Basque ethnographic items, such as prehistoric stelae once used as grave markers, and paintings by Zuloaga, Ribera, and El Greco.