The 43 columns
Starck's forest — no two alike.
Tereajuria — CC BY-SA 3.0 · Fred Romero from Paris, France — CC BY 2.0 · Fred Romero from Paris, France — CC BY 2.0 · Fred Romero from Paris, France — CC BY 2.0
It sits a short walk from everything in the newer centre — dissolving the question: pass through between Guggenheim and Plaza Moyúa, half an hour and a coffee, and you'll remember indoor Bilbao as you remember its titanium.
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The Alhóndiga was the city's wine warehouse (1909) — until Philippe Starck turned it into an indoor culture city: beneath the historic shell one colossal hall stands on 43 columns, no two alike — marble, ceramic, wood and bronze in every style that crossed Starck's mind — the column forest becoming Bilbao's interior icon. Above: library, media centre, cinemas and galleries — and strangest of all, a public pool whose glass floor is the atrium's ceiling, so you look up from below at swimmers floating in the building's sky. It anchors the lively Indautxu quarter of cafés — and entering and wandering is entirely free: half an hour of architectural astonishment en route, its under-column café among the city's finest sits.
Starck's forest — no two alike.
A glass bottom suspending swimmers overhead.
Arriquíbar Plaza 4, 48008 Bilbao