3 Best Sights in Bilbao and the Basque Country, Spain

Pamplona's most remarkable civic building is the ornate town hall on the Plaza Consistorial, with its rich ocher facade setting off brightly gilded balconies. The interior is a lavish wood-and-marble display of wealth, reinforcing Navarra's historic status as a rich kingdom in its own right. The present building was erected between 1753 and 1759. You can appreciate it from the outside, but the building is not open to visitors.

Architect Joaquín de Rucoba built this city hall in 1892, on the site of the San Agustín convent destroyed during the 1836 Carlist War. It shares the Belle Époque style of de Rucoba's Teatro Arriaga. The Salón Árabe, the highlight of the interior, was designed by the same architect who built Bilbao's Café Iruña, as their neo-Mudejar motifs suggest. 

Architect Luis Aladrén created this intensely decorated facade, just two blocks from Plaza Moyúa, for the seat of the Diputación (provincial government) in 1900. A manifestation of the bullish economic moment Bilbao was experiencing as the 20th century kicked off, the building was much criticized for its combination of overwrought aesthetic excess on the outside and minimally practical use of the interior space. The 19th-century Venetian motifs of its halls and salons, the chapel, and the important collection of paintings and sculptures are the best reasons to see the inside of the building.