![Pinterest](https://pinterest.com/pin/create/button/?url=https://uknews.evprotec.com/the-museum-that-regenerated-a-spanish-city/&media=https://uknews.evprotec.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/AA13ywYs.jpeg&description=As he gazes at the eccentric, titanium-plated angles of Bilbao's Guggenheim Museum, Francisco Mulero, a tourist from Spain's Canary Islands, explains why he admires the building. © Getty Images The museum is celebrating its 25th anniversary "It's spectacular," he says. "Its exterior has the appearance of a ship sailing on waves and the inside of it has these infinite curves."He adds: "I've travelled all around the world and this is something in my own country which I just had to see."As it celebrates its 25th anniversary, the museum's success can be seen in the number of visitors it draws: around a million each year on average. And over the last quarter century, the Guggenheim has become a major hub of modern art, hosting works by artists from its home Basque region as well as international giants such as Andy Warhol, Jackson Pollock and Alberto Giacometti.But the museum's greatest legacy is arguably the broader impact it has had on the northern Spanish city that hosts it, a phenomenon that has become known as "The Guggenheim effect". © Getty Images Building the Guggenheim's curved exterior in the 1990s In the 1900s, low-phosphorous iron, mined from the rolling hills nearby and transported along the Nervión river, made Bilbao an industrial powerhouse. In the late 19th Century, the city supplied Britain with two-thirds of its iron ore, and in the decades that followed it provided a fifth of the world's steel.But by the late 20th Century, decline had set in and Bilbao's image was one of industrial wastelands and pollution, while the city and its surrounding region had become frequent targets of terror attacks by Basque group ETA.Basque writer Jon Juaristi described it as "the least hospitable city in all of Spain". © Getty Images The museum initially proved controversial, owing in part to its vast cost Thomas Krens was director of the Solomon R Guggenheim Foundation in New York, which was seeking to expand abroad. When a mooted project in Venice fell through, the plan){kind=link}
As he gazes at the eccentric, titanium-plated angles of Bilbao’s Guggenheim Museum, Francisco Mulero, a tourist from Spain’s Canary Islands, explains why he admires the building.
“It’s spectacular,” he says. “Its exterior has the appearance of a ship sailing on waves and the inside of it has these infinite curves.”
He adds: “I’ve travelled all around the world and this is something in my own country which I just had to see.”
As it celebrates its 25th anniversary, the museum’s success can be seen in the number of visitors it draws: around a million each year on average. And over the last quarter century, the Guggenheim has become a major hub of modern art, hosting works by artists from its home Basque region as well as international giants such as Andy Warhol, Jackson Pollock and Alberto Giacometti.
But the museum’s greatest legacy is arguably the broader impact it has had on the northern Spanish city that hosts it, a phenomenon that has become known as “The Guggenheim effect”.