Bilbao

Opening in 1997 changed what a broken industrial city could be; as others copied it, this city's name became the term. Titanium sheets overlap like fish scales and throw light back under cloud. The flower puppy at the river door is replanted twice a year.

The quarter began as seven streets and is still called the Seven Streets. More lanes were added afterwards. The name stayed as it was, so counting them does not come out right.

The whole market sits under a roof pushed out over the river. The 1929 building keeps its stained glass and stair rails, and a refit in the 2010s turned the lower floor into bars. The fish counters upstairs only really work in the morning.

Instead of a deck, a gondola hung from the span carries cars and people across. Built this way in 1893 to leave clear height for ships. It is among the oldest transporter bridges still working. The upper walkway is ticketed separately; the wind is strong.

A neoclassical square arcaded on all four sides, so a full circuit in the rain leaves you dry. Bars hold the arcade, and when evening comes people drink standing between the columns. On Sunday mornings stamp and bric-a-brac stalls take the same ground.

A wine warehouse of 1909 rebuilt into a culture centre. No two of the forty-three columns downstairs are alike, so you pass a different period at each. The rooftop pool has a glass floor, and from the lobby below you see the swimmers' feet.

A funicular running since 1915 reaches the hilltop in three minutes. From up there the way the river loops through the city reads at once. The ground the old steelworks stood on can be traced along the same bend.

The city's football club has kept to players raised in the Basque country for over a century. The ground was rebuilt beside the old one in 2013, and its skin turns the club's colour at night.

More than three hundred stone steps climb from the old town to the church, though a public lift in the next lane does the same job. The Virgin is the province's patron, so when the football club wins something the trophy is carried up here.

The dry dock where ships were built was left in place and the museum put up around it, so the real vessels standing on the drained floor outweigh anything indoors.

On the edge of Dona Casilda park, a short riverside walk from the Guggenheim. It spans El Greco, Goya and Zurbaran through to Basque painters like Zuloaga. The Guggenheim has the modern work and this one the old masters, and a single day takes in the pair.

Calatrava's white arched footbridge over the Nervion, from 1997; the name is Basque for white bridge. Its glass deck turned slippery in rain and people kept falling, so a rubber mat was laid over it. Look downriver from the deck and the Guggenheim is in view.

A tiny chapel tops a rocky islet jutting into the sea, linked to the coast by a stone bridge and over 200 steps. The custom is to ring its bell three times and make a wish. In busy seasons the path needs booking, which is free, before you set off.

Saint James's Gothic church, set amid the Casco Viejo lanes, on the northern branch of the Camino de Santiago. The stone-roofed porch at the south door is a welcome shelter in this rainy city. A small cloister hides beside it.

The town whose bombing in 1937 gave Picasso's painting its name, reached from Bilbao by local train. The Tree of Gernika, an oak standing for Basque liberties, grows beside the old assembly house. A tile copy of the painting covers a wall in town.