Arenal Park

This guide to Arenal Park in Bilbao starts three centuries back, when the plaza was a working river beach where fishermen scraped their hulls and a foundry forged anchors for royal fleets. It follows the city's decision in 1754 to wall in and bury that shore, raising it into a nineteenth-century promenade of fountains, pools and class-separated footpaths. From there it turns to architect Pedro Ispizua's 1928 design for the park's bandstand, first sketched as a seashell before cost forced a stranger solution.