Goienkale

This guide to Goienkale, the oldest street in Bilbao's old town, opens with a strange coincidence: two boys born fifty years and a world apart share the same birthday, one is Mozart, the other Juan Crisostomo Arriaga, born at number eight in 1806. It follows his rapid rise, an opera staged in his hometown at fourteen, a move to Paris to study under Cherubini at sixteen, and a teaching post at the Conservatoire by eighteen. Stand at number eight, where the street wall once ran six meters high, and picture the newborn upstairs, already a stone's throw from becoming a local legend.