Main Street of Bilbao: Gran Via

The part of the Gran Via we are walking through today is only one half, the first half, the first part that was built. If you want to read about its origins and Bilbao in the Ninetenth century, go to the post Gran Via de Don Diego Lopez de Haro

An entrance to the Bilbao subway train, designed by Norman Foster,
and also a view of Gran Via from Plaza Circular

A city like many other cities. As special as any other city. Nothing special. Somewhat characteristic. North of the South and South to the North. South to the nearby sea through which the bilboes (whatever they were) sailed to England some hundreds of years ago.

An old European city, and yet, tipically Ninetenth Century in its urban core.

Why does Bilbao have so little remainings from the Medieval Ages? Too many floods, too many fires and a growth too quick to be carefull in certains periods of the XXth Century.
The urban Expansion that was planned and executed during the last 1800s had its most important thoroughfare, its Main Street, where banks and trading companies hurried to take their places. The Main Street is called Gran Via, Gran Via de don Diego López de Haro. If we walk from the neibourhood of the Plaza Circular towards Plaza Moyua we will see the buildings, the trees, the windows, the paths, the shops you'll find in the following images. The photographs were taken a crazy autumn day that believed to be a spring morning.

If you're staying at some small hotel in the Old Quarter, lest's say the Petit Palace Arana or the Tryp Hotel, and you want to get to the Guggenheim Museum, the Main Street wil guide you. From the neighbourhood of the Moyua Plaza and from Moyua Plaza itself, were you can settle in the Carlton Hotel, both the Pelli Tower and Frank Gerhy's Guggenheim Museum are visible. If you have a room in one of those hotels of the Ensanche (the Nineteenth Century Expansion Area, where the industrial grounds have supported the rise of the new Bilbao), you are in the Gran Via or next to it. These hotels include NH Villa de Bilbao, Abba Parque, Hesperia Zubialde, Ercilla, Meliá (former Sheraton ), Miró, Dómine and others.

Today's walk starts at Plaza Circular and ends at Plaza Moyua. There are more than 50 images ahead, so it's better to double click one of them to start the slide show

 

To the post Gran Via de Don Diego Lopez de Haro