Guides · Bilbao
10 Best Things to Do in Bilbao
By Tomas Achmedovas · CEO and co-founder
CEO and co-founder
This guide covers the 10 best things to do in Bilbao, Spain, ranked for travellers with two or three days in the largest city of the Basque Country. Every entry gives the exact street address, the nearest Metro Bilbao station or Euskotran tram stop with a walking time, how far it sits from the centre, and a Pro Tip based on how the place actually works on the day.
Bilbao is compact and genuinely walkable. It runs roughly 2 km from the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao along the Nervion to the far edge of the Casco Viejo, about 25 minutes at a slow pace, and nearly all of that is flat riverside paving. You will not need transport for most of this list. Where you do, a Barik card bought for 3 EUR at any Metro Bilbao ticket machine cuts the fare on the metro, the Euskotran tram, Bizkaibus routes and the Artxanda Funicular, and a single card can be shared between several travellers.
The entries fall into three clusters. Numbers one, four, six and eight line the Abandoibarra riverfront and the Indautxu district on the west side. Numbers two, three, five and seven belong to the Casco Viejo and the hills rising directly behind it. The last two head out to the surrounding Basque coast - the Vizcaya Bridge at Portugalete, 13 km downriver, and San Juan de Gaztelugatxe, a 35 km day trip toward Bermeo. Build your days around those clusters and you spend your time looking at things instead of crossing town. Visitors arriving from Madrid are usually surprised by how green and how wet the north is by comparison, and how much closer the city feels in character to San Sebastian an hour east along the coast. The Gaztelugatxe walk is exposed the whole way and miserable in rain, so check Bilbao weather before you commit a day to it rather than after. For a base, the hotels in Bilbao around Abando sit between the first two clusters and keep the metro on your doorstep.
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1Guggenheim Museum Bilbao - The Titanium Landmark That Remade the City
Frank Gehry's titanium-clad museum opened in October 1997 and turned a declining port city into a design destination. The building is the main event: roughly 24,000 square metres of curving limestone, glass and titanium wrapped around a 50-metre atrium. Jeff Koons's flower-covered Puppy guards the main entrance, Louise Bourgeois's bronze spider Maman crouches on the river terrace, and Richard Serra's weathered steel corridors fill the long ground-floor gallery.
Inside, the collection leans post-war and contemporary, with temporary shows rotating roughly three times a year. General admission runs about 18 EUR, under-18s enter free, and the audio guide is included in the ticket. Allow two hours, or three when a major exhibition is running. The Guggenheim Museum Bilbao sits on reclaimed dockland, and the walk around its exterior costs nothing at all.
2Casco Viejo and the Siete Calles - The Medieval Core of Bilbao
The Casco Viejo started as seven parallel lanes laid out in the 1400s, and locals still call it the Siete Calles. Somera, Artekale, Tenderia, Belosticalle, Carniceria Vieja, Barrenkale and Barrenkale Barrena run between the Catedral de Santiago and the riverbank, most of them barely wide enough for two people to pass a shop doorway.
Plaza Nueva, the arcaded neoclassical square completed in 1851, anchors the eastern edge and packs pintxo bars under its 64 arches. The Gothic Catedral de Santiago dates from the 14th century and charges about 5 EUR to enter. Sunday mornings bring a flea market and a bird market to the square. The whole quarter is pedestrianised, so this is a walking entry with no transport involved once you arrive.
3Mercado de la Ribera - The Riverside Market Hall With a Guinness Record
The Mercado de la Ribera runs about 10,000 square metres along the Nervion, which earned it a Guinness listing as the most complete municipal food market in Europe. The current art deco hall went up in 1929, replacing centuries of open-air trading on the same stretch of bank, and a 2010 renovation added glass, lifts and a first-floor eating gallery.
The ground floor still functions as a working market. Fishmongers sell hake and Cantabrian anchovies, butchers hang whole cuts, and grocers stack Idiazabal sheep cheese and Gernika peppers. Upstairs, about a dozen counters serve pintxos, cider and txakoli from midday, where a plate and a glass together cost roughly 5 EUR. Entry is free and hours run from around 08:00 to 14:30 Monday to Thursday, longer on Friday and Saturday.
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4Museo de Bellas Artes - The Collection Locals Rate Above the Guggenheim
The Museo de Bellas Artes de Bilbao holds roughly 10,000 works spanning the 12th century to the present, and plenty of residents rank it above the Guggenheim for depth. Its strongest rooms cover Spanish painting, with El Greco, Goya and Zurbaran, alongside a Basque section built around Ignacio Zuloaga and Aurelio Arteta that you will not find represented anywhere else at this scale.
It stands at the edge of Dona Casilda Park, five minutes on foot from the Guggenheim, which makes pairing the two easy. General admission is about 10 EUR and the last two opening hours of the day are free. A large extension designed by Norman Foster with Luis Maria Uriarte has been reshaping the complex, so confirm which galleries are open before you set out.
5Artxanda Funicular - Three Minutes to the Best View in Bilbao
The Funicular de Artxanda has hauled passengers up the 770-metre track from Castanos since 1915. The ride lasts three minutes and climbs about 226 metres, ending at a terrace that frames the entire Nervion valley - the Guggenheim's titanium roof, the Iberdrola Tower, the port stretching west, and the green ridges closing in behind the city.
A return ticket costs around 4.60 EUR, roughly 2.30 EUR each way, and the Barik card is accepted at the barrier. Cars leave every 15 minutes from early morning until 22:00, later on summer weekends. At the top you will find a park, a memorial to the Basque fighters of 1937, a handful of restaurants with valley-facing terraces, and a marked path that walks back down to the city in about 40 minutes.
6Zubizuri and the Nervion Riverfront Walk - Calatrava's White Bridge
Santiago Calatrava's Zubizuri opened in 1997, the same year as the Guggenheim, and the name means white bridge in Basque. A single steel arch carries a curved deck about 75 metres across the Nervion. The original glass-brick walking surface turned so slippery in the rain that the city eventually covered it, a decision that ended up in court between the architect and the council.
The bridge works best as one point on a longer route rather than a destination in itself. Follow the Campo Volantin promenade along the right bank from the Ayuntamiento bridge, cross the Zubizuri, then continue west along Abandoibarra past the Guggenheim to the Euskalduna. That full walk covers roughly 3 km of flat, car-free paving and takes about an hour at an unhurried pace. It costs nothing.
7Basilica de Begona - The Hilltop Church Basques Call Amatxu
The Basilica de Begona honours the Virgin of Begona, patron of Bizkaia, known across the province as Amatxu - Basque for mother. Building started in 1519 on the spot where the Virgin was said to have appeared, and the Gothic nave took most of the following century to complete. The bell tower, added in 1907, is visible from a good share of the city below.
Inside, the 16th-century figure of the Virgin stands above the altar under a silver canopy, ringed by votive offerings left by sailors returning from the Atlantic. Entry is free. Reaching it from the Casco Viejo means about 12 minutes up the Calzadas de Mallona steps, or you can skip the climb entirely with the Ascensor de Begona, the public lift on Calle Esperanza, for well under 1 EUR.
8Azkuna Zentroa - A 1909 Wine Warehouse Rebuilt by Philippe Starck
Azkuna Zentroa occupies the Alhondiga, a municipal wine warehouse finished in 1909 and then left empty for decades. Philippe Starck gutted the interior and reopened it in 2010, resting the three brick-clad blocks on 43 pillars that are each different - Roman columns, Indian carvings, art deco shafts - standing in an atrium you can walk through free of charge at any hour it is open.
The building now runs a cinema, a public library, exhibition halls, a gym and a rooftop swimming pool with a glass floor. Look up from the atrium and you see swimmers overhead. Exhibitions are usually free or a few EUR, and the late opening hours make this the sensible stop when Atlantic rain closes in, which it does often between October and April.
9Vizcaya Bridge at Portugalete - The World's Oldest Transporter Bridge
The Puente de Vizcaya has swung a suspended gondola across the mouth of the Nervion since 1893, making it the oldest transporter bridge still in service anywhere. Alberto Palacio, a student of Gustave Eiffel, designed it to move people and carriages without blocking the shipping channel below. UNESCO added it to the World Heritage List in 2006 as a landmark of industrial engineering.
The gondola crosses the 160-metre span in about 90 seconds, runs every eight minutes day and night, and costs well under 1 EUR on foot. A separate ticket of roughly 12 EUR takes the lift 50 metres up to the walkway along the top deck, where the view runs down the estuary to the Abra bay and the open Cantabrian Sea. Portugalete's steep old quarter sits on one bank, Getxo's shipowner mansions on the other.
10San Juan de Gaztelugatxe - The Day Trip Up 241 Steps
San Juan de Gaztelugatxe is a rocky islet on the Bizkaia coast joined to the mainland by a stone causeway and a zigzag staircase of 241 steps. A hermitage has stood on the summit since at least the 10th century, and the chapel there now traces back to 1053, rebuilt more than once after fires and coastal raids. Game of Thrones filmed it as Dragonstone, which multiplied visitor numbers almost overnight.
Access is free but needs a timed reservation booked in advance through the official Bizkaia tourism system, and summer slots run out. From the car park the round trip covers about 2.5 km with a steep return climb - budget two hours on site plus travel each way. The site sits between Bakio and Bermeo, so pairing it with Bermeo's fishing harbour makes a full and satisfying day out of one bus fare.
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CEO and co-founder
Tomas is the co-founder and director of trip1, an European company specializing in reservation services. He launched the company in 2025 with a focus on building scalable, efficient operations.
10 Best Things to Do in Bilbao, Spain - FAQ
The Guggenheim Museum Bilbao first, inside and out, with Puppy at the entrance and Maman on the river terrace. Then the seven lanes of the Casco Viejo and the pintxo bars of Plaza Nueva, the Mercado de la Ribera, and the three-minute Artxanda Funicular for the view over the city. Out of town, the Vizcaya Bridge and San Juan de Gaztelugatxe are worth a day.
Yes, for the city itself. Two days cover the Guggenheim, the Museo de Bellas Artes and Azkuna Zentroa on one side of the river, and the Casco Viejo, the Mercado de la Ribera, the Basilica de Begona and the Artxanda Funicular on the other. Add a third day for the Vizcaya Bridge at Portugalete and San Juan de Gaztelugatxe on the coast.
May to September, with June to August the driest and warmest, when highs reach about 25C. The north is green because it is wet: the heaviest rain falls between October and January. Keep a dry, settled day for San Juan de Gaztelugatxe, where the walk is exposed, and save Azkuna Zentroa and the museums for the rainy ones.
Pintxos, small bites eaten one or two at a time at the bar with a glass of txakoli, the local white wine. Staff count your plates and toothpicks, and you pay before moving on. Look for hake, Cantabrian anchovies, Idiazabal sheep cheese and Gernika peppers. Upstairs at the Mercado de la Ribera a pintxo and a glass cost roughly 5 euros.
Yes. It is about 2 km from the Guggenheim along the Nervion to the far edge of the Casco Viejo, roughly 25 minutes at a slow pace on flat riverside paving. You only need transport for the hills and the coast: a Barik card, 3 euros at any Metro Bilbao machine, cuts fares on the metro, tram, Bizkaibus and the Artxanda Funicular.
On busy dates, yes. Entry is free, but a timed ticket from the official booking site is needed every day in summer and on weekends and holidays in the low season; in October 2026 that means weekends and 12 October. Allow two hours on site for the 241 steps and the steep climb back, and wear proper shoes, as the stone turns slick in drizzle.
