Euskal Itsas Museoa

This guide to the Basque Maritime Museum in San Sebastian starts with the one stone tower that survived when British and Portuguese troops burned the port to the ground in August 1813. Built in the mid-1700s as a Merchants Guild watch house, it tracked ships, collected harbor taxes, and served for years as a sea rescue post. For a stretch it was also a school teaching young Basques to read the stars and steer a ship, and even a small prison holding whoever port authorities decided needed locking up.