Bilbao · Spain
The Seven Streets: Medieval Heart & Basque Soul
Bilbao, Spain
Climb from the belly to the soul of Bilbao's Old Town. Starting at the Art Deco Ribera market and the pintxo bars of the medieval Seven Streets, this walk winds through the Gothic cathedral and the Basque Museum before rising up the Mallona stairs to the hilltop basilica of Begoña, the city's patron saint. It is a tour of how a 700-year-old grid of stone streets still eats, prays and speaks Basque.
The Mercado de la Ribera and the pintxo-and-txikiteo culture of the Seven Streets Plaza Nueva - the arcaded square that is Bilbao's pintxo temple and home to the Basque language academy The Gothic Catedral de Santiago, a waypoint on the Camino del Norte The 300-step Calzadas de Mallona climb up to the Begoña hill The Basílica de Begoña, hilltop shrine of 'La Amatxu', patron saint of Biscay
The riverside Art Deco market, built in 1929, stands on a spot that has sold food since Bilbao's 1300 founding charter and was once among the largest covered markets in Europe. Today it splits between working fish, meat and produce stalls upstairs and a buzzing pintxo gastro-plaza below.
Bilbao's Gothic Cathedral of Santiago, begun around 1397, is the oldest major building in the city and a waypoint on the Camino del Norte, where medieval pilgrims bound for Santiago de Compostela once fed the local economy. Look for the scallop shells carved into its stone, the centuries-old emblem of Saint James that still guides travellers today.
Calle Somera is the first of Bilbao's original medieval streets, part of Las Siete Calles ('The Seven Streets') that made up the entire town after its founding in 1300. Once the whole of Bilbao, these lanes are today lined with lively pintxo bars.
The Euskal Museoa, Bilbao's archaeological and ethnographic museum, occupies the Baroque cloister of the former Jesuit College of San Andrés and guards the Mikeldi, an Iron Age stone animal idol that predates the medieval city.
A lively square in the upper Old Town named for Bilbao-born philosopher and writer Miguel de Unamuno, sitting at the foot of the Begoña hill. It is both a neighbourhood gathering point and the threshold where the flat medieval grid ends and the climb up the Mallona stairs to the basilica begins.
Plaza Nueva is Bilbao's grand arcaded square, completed in 1851, that serves as the epicentre of the city's pintxo scene and the home of Euskaltzaindia, the Basque language academy. By day it hosts a Sunday flea market, and by evening it fills with the txikiteo crowd hopping from bar to bar.
The Calzadas de Mallona are a monumental stone stairway of more than 300 steps climbing from Plaza Unamuno up the hillside toward the Basilica of Begoña, built over the site of the old town cemetery. It is a free, dramatic ascent that most visitors never make, and the point where the tour leaves the belly of the city for its soul on the hill.
A hilltop park laid out on the site of a demolished steelworks, where a lone brick chimney is preserved as industrial memory and a wide terrace opens the best free view back over the Old Town you just climbed.
The hilltop Gothic basilica of La Amatxu (begun 1511), patron saint of Biscay, whose Basque name from the legendary cry 'Bego oina!' gave the surrounding district of Begoña its name. Reached by the climb up from the Old Town, it is the spiritual summit of Bilbao and the emotional close of the tour.
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