Txabarri Jauregia

This guide to Txabarri Jauregia in Bilbao follows steel and mining baron Victor Chavarri, who spent a fortune building an asymmetrical mansion on Plaza Moyua with no two windows alike, modeled on the Flemish architecture he had fallen for as an engineering student in Liege. Architect Paul Hankar, brought over from Brussels, reused an earlier design of his own and pushed it further into broken shapes and odd angles, work that dragged on from 1888 to 1894. You'll hear how the mansion later sheltered the Basque army during the civil war before taking on its present-day role. Look up at the roofline, carved like sculpture, before you step inside.