Bilbao Cathedral

Bilbao Cathedral tickets: which one to buy

The cathedral sits in the middle of the old quarter, a few steps off the seven streets that form the core of medieval Bilbao, and it charges a small admission that includes an audio guide. It is easy to fold into any walk of the Casco Viejo, which is what most visitors do. Guided tours of the old town cover the cathedral, the market hall on the river, the church of San Anton on the bridge and the arcaded square, and take about two hours.

Pilgrim itineraries treat the building as a waypoint on the northern coastal route to Santiago, which is how it began and why it is dedicated to James; the shell motif appears throughout the fabric. If your day is built around the Guggenheim, the contrast is the point of coming here, and the two are twenty minutes apart on foot along the river. Pintxo bars surround the cathedral on every side, which makes the timing of a visit rather easy to get wrong.

Visiting Bilbao Cathedral: what to see

This was the parish church of the town for most of its history and only became a cathedral in 1955, when the diocese of Bilbao was created. It is also the oldest substantial building in the city, begun in the fourteenth century on the site of something older that served pilgrims before the town was founded in 1300. The core is Basque Gothic, sober and well-proportioned, with a fine vaulted cloister of the fifteenth century that is the highlight of the interior.

A doorway on the north side, known as the Angel's door, opens onto the street that once carried the pilgrim traffic. The tall spire and the west portico look medieval but are not: they were designed in Gothic Revival style by a local architect and completed in 1887, after a fire, and they give the building the vertical silhouette it now has over the old-town roofs. Restoration in the 2000s cleaned the stone and opened the upper galleries. Since 2015 the church has carried a UNESCO listing with the northern pilgrim routes.

Bilbao Cathedral opening hours and the best time to go

Bilbao rains, and rains most in autumn and winter, which is worth knowing because the old quarter is one of the better places in Spain to spend a wet day. The cathedral keeps a midday break and closes earlier on Sundays. Mornings are quiet inside. The fiestas of Bilbao in August turn the old town into a single street party for nine days, with stages on the squares and the cathedral surrounded by noise until dawn;

it is a remarkable week and a bad one for quiet sightseeing. The Sunday market on the riverbank near the market hall is worth timing a visit around. Pintxo bars open at about eight in the evening and the streets around the church are the densest concentration of them in the city. Allow forty minutes inside, then walk down to the river and take the tram along to the Guggenheim rather than the direct route through the newer streets.