Bilbao, Spain

The town of Bilbao is approximately 8 miles up the river Nervion from the Atlantic. There is a population of about 450,000 in the city itself and 1 million in the suburban area. Until approximately 50 years ago the port for Bilbao was in the city itself. The area was originally a fishing village established in the 14th century. There are many iron mines around this area and the town had many foundries and other processing plants to turn the ore into steel and then products made of steel. There were also many ship building sites in the city.

The city was very rich into the early part of the 20th century but then in the 70s and 80s the economy turned and the city decided to change their history. The port was moved to the mouth of the river and the steel mills and ship building was stopped. The city decided to improve the life of their inhabitants and provide for a better life long term.

The Guggenheim Foundation was looking for a place to have a new museum in Europe and Bilbao threw their hat into the ring. They agreed to fund the entire cost of the museum with the foundation providing the art. When the city decided to do the revitalization they decided that they would only allow buildings, bridges and parks to be designed by well known architects. The results are amazing and the city and landscape of Bilbao is quite sophisticated.

Frank Gehry won the competition for the design of the museum which is quite iconic. It was finished in November 1997 at a cost of 350 million Euro. The first year it opened there were 2 million visitors and now they average over 1 million visitors a year. The town citizens were leery about spending the money to build the museum, but their economy has blossomed because of the tourism it has created.

We started the day with just overcast skies but ended with heavy rains which limited our ability to got photos of the building. The art is very avantgard, but the building itself is what you want to see.