Best Places to Visit in Bilbao
Most people arrive in Bilbao with one thing on their list, the Guggenheim, and then discover a whole city hiding behind it. I have been three times now, and the places I keep coming back to are a mixture of the famous and the quiet. This is my honest list of the best places to visit in Bilbao.
The Guggenheim Museum
Start with the reason you came. Frank Gehry’s titanium building shimmers over the river, catching the Basque light in a different shade every hour. The sculpture garden with the flowered puppy and the bronze spider sets the tone before you enter, and the gallery spaces inside are as impressive as the works they hold. Book your ticket online in advance and give it most of a day.
The Casco Viejo Old Town
The old town, Bun Gernika and Plaza Nueva at its heart, is the soul of Bilbao. Wander the narrow lanes, duck into the bars that line the squares, and eat pintxos until you cannot stand. Plaza Nueva is the place to start, with its arcades and its crowds of people standing around barrels with their drinks and little plates of food. It is the best version of a European old town, lived in rather than preserved for tourists. The cafés under the arcades are the perfect halfway stop between pintxos rounds, and the square is always full of some festival or other that you stumbled into by accident. The cafés under the arcades are the perfect halfway stop between pintxos rounds, and the square is always full of some festival or other that you stumbled into by accident.
The Ribera Market
Under the big iron and glass arches by the river, the Ribera Market is one of the great covered markets of Europe. Stalls of gleaming fish, hanging jamon, pyramids of peppers and piles of cheese fill the ground floor, and a food court upstairs feeds the neighbourhood all day. A market is the fastest way to understand a city’s food, and this one is superb.
The Transporter Bridge and Getxo
Follow the estuary out to the coast and you find the Bizkaia Transporter Bridge, a graceful iron structure from the nineteenth century that still carries a gondola across the water to the old port of Portugalete. Riding it over the estuary, watching the container ship traffic below and the sea beyond, is a small thrill nothing else in the city quite matches. Nearby Getxo is a relaxed seaside town with beaches and cafes that make a gentle half day.
Mount Artxanda
Take the Artxanda funicular from the city centre up the hill and you swap the river for a panoramic view of Bilbao folded into its green valley. On a clear day you can trace the river, the bridges, and the towers of the Old Town from above. There are walking trails at the top, and a late afternoon ascent to catch the sun setting over the city is one of my favourite things to do here.
The Calatrava Bridge and the Zubizuri
Bilbao’s modern bridges are sculptures on their own. The Zubizuri, a white pedestrian span over the river wrapped in a steel lattice, was Calatrava’s gift to the city, and its neighbour the Ribera footbridge adds another curve of architecture to the water. Walking the riverside between these and the Guggenheim is my standard route, and it never gets old. The whole walk only takes a couple of hours, but it threads together the city’s story from industrial past to cultural present in a single line of steel and water.
A word on pacing: Bilbao packs a lot into a small footprint, and the temptation is to run from sight to sight. I have learned to build the day around the river instead, walking one bank out and the other back, with a market and a bar and a museum slotted in along the way. That rhythm, half architectural detour and half long slow wander, is the one that has served me best here.
The Basque Coast Day Trip
One of the best places in Bilbao is not in Bilbao at all. San Sebastian, an hour and a half away by bus, gives you one of Europe’s most beautiful bays and its own fierce pintxos scene. The seaside town of Gernika, an hour out, carries a deep and important history along with its beautiful old market square. Both make excellent day trips that round out the whole Basque experience.
Putting It Together
Give Bilbao a full three days and split it between icons and wandering. Museum in the morning, old town and pintxos in the afternoon, a ferry trip over the estuary or a funicular up the hill for the view, and one day on the coast if you can. It is a small city, but it is layered, and the best places are the ones you discover by walking slowly with a full belly.
