Can Bilbao’s Guggenheim provide a model of art-led levelling up?

William Cook finds out that a once-controversial museum has been at the centre of the rejuvenation of the Basque city

Designed by US architect Frank Gehry, the Bilbao Guggenheim is an extraordinary building (Getty)

Outside Bilbao’s Guggenheim Museum, beside the Río Nervión, stand two sculptures by Eduardo Chillida, the Basque Country’s greatest modern artist, which symbolise the rejuvenation of this gutsy Spanish port. These robust iron monoliths reflect Bilbao’s rustbelt origins, a city built on shipbuilding and steelmaking, and its dramatic shift to service industries, clean energy and research.

Art has played a leading role in Bilbao’s revival, and the Guggenheim Museum has been centre stage throughout this process. Twenty-five years since it opened, Bilbao is inconceivable without it. So how did an art gallery act as a spur for urban regeneration – not just as a cultural catalyst, but as an economic driver too? As the Guggenheim celebrates its silver jubilee, what can other cities learn from what’s become commonly known as the “Bilbao Effect”?

Designed by American starchitect Frank Gehry, in an old dockland site on the waterfront, the Guggenheim is an extraordinary building. Photographs don’t do it justice – you have to see it for yourself. A twisted mass of gleaming metal, more like sculpture than architecture, it’s an artwork on a massive scale. One of the world’s most iconic buildings like the Eiffel Tower. Yet, like the Eiffel Tower, its construction was extremely contentious – looking back, it seems remarkable that it was ever built at all.