21 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.

This Rafael Moneo–designed monolith of glass and stone, ingeniously contained within a Romanesque palace, is Pamplona's architectural pièce de résistance. With papers and parchments dating to the 9th century, the archive holds more than 75,000 linear feet of documents and has room for more than 55,500 feet more. The library and reading rooms are lined with cherrywood and crowned with a gilded ceiling, and there's a 12th-century crypt that you can visit for free.

Bilbao's most cherished religious sanctuary, dedicated to Bizkaia's patron saint, can be reached via 313 stairs from Plaza de Unamuno or by the gigantic elevator (Ascensor de Begoña) looming over Calle Esperanza 6. The Gothic nave was begun in 1519 and was completed in 1620 with the economic support of dozens of shipbuilders and merchants, whose businesses are commemorated on the inner walls. The high ground the basilica occupies was strategically important during the Carlist Wars of 1836 and 1873, and as a result La Begoña suffered significant damage that was not restored until the beginning of the 20th century.

The 1525 Palacio de Bendaña and adjoining bronze-plated building are home to one of Vitoria's main attractions, the Bibat, which combines the Museo Fournier de Naipes (Playing-Card Museum) with the Museo de Arqueología. The palacio houses the 15,000 playing-card sets of Don Heraclio Fournier, who founded a famous playing-card factory in 1868. One of the largest and finest such collections in the world, it features hand-painted cards from Japan, round cards from India, and other ancient specimens dating to the 12th century. The Museo de la Arqueología, in the newest building, has Paleolithic dolmens, Roman art and artifacts, medieval objects, and the famous Stele del Jinete (Stele of the Horseback Rider), an early Basque tombstone.

This historic library and intellectual club was originally called El Sitio (The Siege) in memory of Bilbao's successful resistance to the Carlist siege of 1876. (Carlists were supporters of Fernando VII's brother, Don Carlos, over his daughter Isabella II as rightful heir to the Spanish throne.) Now a municipal library, the Bidebarrieta has a music auditorium that is one of Bilbao's most beautiful venues and a spot to check for the infrequent performances held there. The reading rooms are open to the public and are a good place to read newspapers, make notes, or just enjoy the historical echoes of the place.

You can see the facade of this 19th-century cathedral from the river, across town. With the tallest church spire in the province, the Catedral del Buen Pastor was constructed in the neo-Gothic style. It's worth a glimpse inside for its beautiful stained-glass windows.

The oldest standing church in Logroño, San Bartolomé was built between the 13th and 14th centuries in a French Gothic style. Highlights include the 11th-century Mudejar tower and an elaborate 14th-century Gothic doorway. Some carvings on the stone facade depict scenes from the Bible. This is also a landmark on the Camino de Santiago pilgrimage path.

Noted for its twin baroque towers, the present-day cathedral was rebuilt in the 16th century in a Gothic style atop ruins of a 12th-century Romanesque church.

Designed by the engineer Valentín Gorbeña in 1893 and finished by architect Severino Achúcarro in 1898, this colorful train station looks across the Nervión River to the Paris Opéra–inspired Teatro Arriaga, responding with its own references to the colonnaded Parisian Louvre. The peacock-fan-shape, yellow-and-green-tiled entrance is spectacular, along with the immense stained-glass window over the access to the tracks in which facets of Bizkaian life and work are represented, from farmers and fishermen to factory workers and jai alai players. Meanwhile, the graceful arch of the hangar over the tracks is typical of traditional railroad terminals around Europe. 

Honoring the patron saint of mariners, San Nicolás de Bari, the city's early waterfront church was built over an earlier hermitage and consecrated in 1756. With a striking baroque facade over the Arenal, originally a sandy beach, the church weathered significant damage at the hands of French and Carlist troops in the 19th century. Sculptures by Juan Pascual de Mena adorn the interior. Look for the oval plaque to the left of the door marking the high-water mark of the flood of 1983.

Architect Joaquín de Rucoba built this city hall in 1892, on the site of the San Agustín convent destroyed during the 1836 Carlist War. It shares the Belle Époque style of de Rucoba's Teatro Arriaga. The Salón Árabe, the highlight of the interior, was designed by the same architect who built Bilbao's Café Iruña, as their neo-Mudejar motifs suggest. 

Dating to the 10th century, this monastery was later converted by Cistercian monks to a pilgrims' hospital; next door, and now operated by the Bodegas Irache, is the famous brass faucet that supplies pilgrims with free-flowing holy wine. Call ahead to arrange a guided tour.

Just south of the park, this weaponry museum has prehistoric hatchets, 20th-century pistols, and a sand-table reproduction of the 1813 battle between the Duke of Wellington's troops and the French.

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.

Architect Luis Aladrén created this intensely decorated facade, just two blocks from Plaza Moyúa, for the seat of the Diputación (provincial government) in 1900. A manifestation of the bullish economic moment Bilbao was experiencing as the 20th century kicked off, the building was much criticized for its combination of overwrought aesthetic excess on the outside and minimally practical use of the interior space. The 19th-century Venetian motifs of its halls and salons, the chapel, and the important collection of paintings and sculptures are the best reasons to see the inside of the building.

The heart of Estella is the arcaded Plaza San Martín and its chief civic monument, the 12th-century Palacio de los Reyes de Navarra. The palace now houses the Museo Gustavo de Maeztu, displaying work from a 20th-century Navarran painter, Gustavo de Maeztu y Whitney. The building itself is what's really impressive, but the museum is free so you might as well have a peek.

This 11th-century church is known as La Aguja (The Needle) for its pyramid-shaped 135-foot Romanesque-Gothic tower.

Note the equestrian statue of the saint Santiago Matamoros (aka St. James the Moorslayer) presiding over the main door of this church, which was reconstructed in the 16th century.

Distinguished for accumulating the deepest water of any building in the casco viejo during the disastrous 1983 flood, as can be witnessed by the water mark more than 14 feet above the floor in the back of the church (to the left as you come in), this simple baroque church was the first Jesuit building in Bilbao, built in 1604. Originally the home of the Colegio de San Andrés de la Compañía de Jesús (St. Andrew's School of the Order of Jesuits), the original school is now divided between the Museo Vasco and the church dedicated to both St. Johns—the Evangelist and the Baptist. The church's most important relic is the Relicario de la Vera Cruz (Relic of the True Cross), a silver-plated cross containing what is widely believed to be the largest existing fragment of the cross used at Calvary to execute Jesus in AD 33.