3 Best Sights in Bilbao and the Basque Country, Spain

Designed by the world-renowned Spanish architect Rafael Moneo and located at the mouth of the Urumea River, the Kursaal is San Sebastián's postmodern concert hall, film society, and convention center. The gleaming cubes of glass that make up this bright complex were conceived as a perpetuation of the site's natural geography, an attempt to underline the harmony between the natural and the artificial and to create a visual stepping-stone between the heights of Monte Urgull and Monte Ulia. Home of the Basque Country's symphony orchestra, the venue is also a favorite for ballet, opera, theater, and jazz performances. It has two auditoriums, a gargantuan banquet hall, meeting rooms, exhibition space, and a set of terraces overlooking the estuary. 

A century ago, this 1,500-seat theater was as exciting a source of Bilbao pride as the Guggenheim is today. Built between 1886 and 1890, when Bilbao's population was a mere 35,000, the Teatro Arriaga represented a gigantic per-capita cultural investment. Always a symbol of Bilbao's industrial might and cultural vibrancy, the original "Nuevo Teatro" (New Theater) was a lavish Belle Époque, neo-baroque spectacle modeled after the Paris Opéra by architect Joaquín Rucoba (1844–1909). The theater was renamed in 1902 for the Bilbaíno musician considered "the Spanish Mozart," Juan Crisóstomo de Arriaga (1806–26).

After a 1914 fire, the new version of the theater opened in 1919. Following years of splendor, the Teatro Arriaga (along with Bilbao's economy) gradually lost vigor; it closed in 1978 for restoration work that was finally concluded in 1986. Now largely eclipsed by the splendid and more spacious Palacio de Euskalduna, the Arriaga stages opera, theater, concerts, and dance events September through June. Walk around the building to see the stained glass on its rear facade and the exuberant caryatids holding up the arches facing the river.

If you've come from Barcelona, this extraordinary facade built in 1901 by architects Alfredo Acebal and Jean Baptiste Darroquy may look familiar. The wild Moderniste excitement of the intensely ornate circular arch is a marked contrast to the more sober Bilbao interpretation of the turn-of-the-20th-century Art Nouveau euphoria. The theater is called Campos Elíseos after Paris's Champs-Élysées (a brief spasm of Francophilia in a town of Anglophiles), as this area of town was a favorite for early-20th-century promenades. During most of the 20th century, Bilbao's theatrical life had two poles: the Casco Viejo's Teatro Arriaga and El Ensanche's Campos Elíseos. The elegant venue offers varied programs of theater, dance, and more.