Fodor's Expert Review Santos Juanes

Distinguished for accumulating the deepest water of any building in the casco viejo during the disastrous 1983 flood, as can be witnessed by the water mark more than 14 feet above the floor in the back of the church (to the left as you come in), this simple baroque church was the first Jesuit building in Bilbao, built in 1604. Originally the home of the Colegio de San Andrés de la Compañía de Jesús (St. Andrew's School of the Order of Jesuits), the original school is now divided between the Museo Vasco and the church dedicated to both St. Johns—the Evangelist and the Baptist. The church's most important relic is the Relicario de la Vera Cruz (Relic of the True Cross), a silver-plated cross containing what is widely believed to be the largest existing fragment of the cross used at Calvary to execute Jesus in AD 33.