FIRST LEVEL MUSEUMS

Biscay   |  Guipuzcoa  |  Alava  |  Navarre  |  French Basque Country

Guggenheim Museum (Bilbao)
The magnificent structure designed by Gehry for Bilbao is made up of a combination of buildings interconnected through a striking central atrium, in which metal, stone, and water merge to evoke the Basque Country's force, independence, and commercial and industrial traditions. This is the heart of Gehry's buildings, in which physical and cultural features of the surroundings in which they are constructed play a central role.

The museum assembles three types of exhibit areas. The permanent collection is exhibited chronologically in nine rectangular galleries in an encyclopaedic arrangement. Completing the museum are other artistic spaces dedicated to a specific series of arties, distributed among nine particularly shaped galleries. The temporary exhibits and the larger works are displayed in a gallery unique for its exceptional dimensions (30 meters wide and 130 meters long, with no columns).

Fine Arts (Bilbao)
This museum combines the original Bilbao Fine Arts Museum, founded in 1908, and the Museum of Modern Art, inaugurated in 1924. It has three main collections: ancient art (El Greco, Zurbarán, Ribera, Goya, Van Dyck, etc.); contemporary art (Gauguin, Bacon, Menz, Solana, Tapies, etc.); and Basque art (Regoyos, Zuloaga, Echevarria, Iturrino, Arteta, etc.).

Ría de Bilbao Maritime Museum (Bilbao)
The Ría de Bilbao Maritime Museum (MMRB-BIIM) is located in the dock area of the old Euskalduna shipyards and stands on a 27,000 m2. The outdoor area is designed to handle a wide range of activities and services and to invite a different ship each year.

This 7,000 m2 building was designed by SENER. The museum building houses the indoor exhibition area, workshops, a education room, ticket offices, the information desk, cloakrooms, the café, the Museum shop and the offices. On the first floor is the media library which contains the museum´s documentation centre.

The Gernika Museum - Peace Museum (Gernika)
The Gernika Museum - Peace Museum is a municipally owned museum which opened on April 7 th 1999. Its intention is to show the significance of Gernika as a long-standing symbol of Basque freedoms, and its present added significance as a symbol for peace, reconciliation and human rights after the bombing of the city and the painting of Picasso's Guernica.

Fisherman´s Museum (Bermeo)
Over the picturesque and typical old port of Bermeo rises the historic Tower of Ercilla (declared a national monument), the ancestral home of the Ercilla family, whose most illustrious son was the famous poet-warrior Don Alonso of Ercilla, author of the epic poem "The Araucarian."

Since 1948, the walls of this tower have contained the galleries of the "Arrantzaleen Museoa" or "Museum of the Fisherman". This is one of the most unusual museums in the world, dedicated entirely to showing visitors the way of life and work of the "arrantzaleak" or Basque fishermen.