The best museums in Bilbao

One of the most famous cities in our country is Bilbao, which has one of the widest and most varied cultural offerings that you can find in Spain. There you can find a wide variety of museums, festivals, art galleries, exhibitions, concerts, plays and many more cultural activities. Although in the city you can discover a lot of corners beyond the cultural ones, today I would like to focus on the museums that you can visit.

Among Bilbao's museums you can find them dedicated to different types of arts and periods, achieving a very complete offer for all tastes. It is clear that all are worth it and with enough time we should visit all of them, I would like to highlight the best museums in Bilbao, the best based on popularity and visitors they have.

Museum of Fine Arts

It is not only one of the most important museums in the city but it is also one of the most important in Spain thanks to its exceptional collection, which includes both medieval and more modern works. Among the most outstanding artists who have a work in the collection are Goya, Velázquez, Zurbarán, El Greco, Sorolla, Picasso, Gauguin or Mary Cassatt. He also dedicates a lot of space to Basque artists, with sculptor Eduardo Chillida as the main exponent.

Guggenheim museum

It is probably the most famous Bilbao museum in the world and the biggest attraction of the city thanks to its spectacular nature. In it you find works by many of the most important artists of the second half of the 20th century, such as Picasso, Robert Rauschenberg, Antonie Tàpies, Andy Warhol or Willem de Koonig. In the permanent collection there are also works belonging to the Guggenheim Museum in New York, the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice or the Deutsche Guggenheim in Berlin.

Archaeological and Ethnological Museum

It is focused on history, ethnology and Basque archeology. Its location is ideal since it is in the heart of Bilbao's old town, in a centuries-old Jesuit cloister. Among the exhibitions that can be seen there is a very interesting one that shows the commercial life of the Community in the century XVI and where you can see boats, construction tools or parts of homes and buildings that show the social life of the time.

Basque Country: Bilbao and the Guggenheim Museum (April 2024)