Two decades ago, Bilbao was off the travel radar ... Guggenheim Museum opened here in October 1997 and the city was back on the map. Over the past 20 years, the halo effect of this architectural ...

It was this tidal river – Ría de Bilbao – that forced the once industrial city to change its ways ... what put Bilbao on the map in 1997. A great way of seeing how modern Bilbao has remade ...

Another semi-truth was that the city was irreversibly on the skids when the Guggenheim came along ... its operation beyond the main museum in New York and Peggy Guggenheim’s former villa in Venice, ...

Bilbao was built on steel and shipbuilding, but by the 1980s those old industries were dying. This gritty Basque city had to find a new direction. It reinvented itself as a hi-tech hub ...

Football fans will find this art-splash, food-obsessed city a wonderfully welcoming place to party (or commiserate). James March has your guide The Standard's journalism is supported by our readers.