Bilbao is one of those cities where numerous corners with close enchantment that turn it attractive and for all that can be found that the visit with thoroughness.
The regeneration process that has been confronting "the Botxo" for some years is contributing to a great extent to that the city shines with own light. Not to lose the best thing of Bilbao, we make its available several routes that, although do not offer a complete vision of all the enchantments of the vizcaina capital, at least serve as guide the traveller, taking to him of the hand between traditional and the modern thing of a city that it looks for to define itself facing the new century. Bilbao has confronted century XXI with a true renovadora energy.
The surprise of those visitors is perceivable who knew industrial Bilbao ten years ago and returning today to "the Botxo" they are with a large city of services, businesses and culture of first magnitude. But more showy still than the structural transformation of Villa it is the amazing change perpetrated in the self-esteem of his inhabitants, who have happened of the downheart caused by the economic crisis of years 90, to the optimism and the pride to live in a city that has made an extraordinary exercise of change will. Bilbao is a large city example that has believed in its own capacity of progress and that has bet hard by the regeneration of degraded urban spaces, the cultural infrastructure investment and the creation of a vanguard architecture that stayed as future example of its transforming eagerness.
The work is undeniable that the Guggenheim, brilliant work of the architect Frank Gehry, developed like fundamental instrument of this reconstruction. Nevertheless, it is long before, in the middle of 1991, after the restoration of the New Seat of the bilbaino Old Helmet, when a change motor was put into operation that has still not stopped. MUSEUM GUGGENHEIM When the Basque institutions decided that Bilbao lodged a new museum, they outside hoped that the project finally selected a luxury starting towards the process of urban regeneration that facing the new century would undertake Villa. What they could not imagine is that the Guggenheim, a building conceived in itself as an art work, would become the main symbol of identification of Bilbao for the rest of the world.
The final commitment to construct the Museum was signed in New York the 27 of February of 1992 by the Lehendakari Jose Antonio Ardanza. In 1993 they gave to beginning construction sites, according to the project designed by the architect Frank Or Gehry and, since the museum opened to its samples to the public Sunday 19 of October of 1997, was described like one as the most significant buildings of century XX. The Guggenheim was born like a strategic investment that it made possible the entrance of Bilbao in the international circuit of the culture and that contributed to prestige and international recognition to the city. Even, the public work delegate and services of Bilbao Ibón Areso have not doubted in affirming, and he is not I lack of reason, that "the Guggenheim has put to Bilbao in the map".