Bilboko Berreginen Museoa

This guide to the Berreginen Museoa in Bilbao explains how, in 1922, municipal figure Manuel Ramirez Escudero pitched a decidedly unfashionable idea inside a repurposed neo-Gothic church: casting the great sculptures of the Louvre, the Vatican and the British Museum for ordinary Basques to see. It traces the project's approval in 1927 and the fact that these casts were molded directly from the originals, making them first copies rather than souvenirs. You'll hear why that distinction mattered once the Second World War damaged or destroyed some of the works they copied. Look up at the vaulted stone nave the casts now stand beneath.