Guggenheim Museum Bilbao: annual attendance 2010-2022

Along with the old town, the pintxos, and Europe’s largest indoor market “La Ribera”, the Guggenheim Museum is one of Bilbao’s landmarks. The museum, housed in a building designed by the renowned architect Frank Gehry, was visited by nearly 1.3 thousand people in 2022, exhibiting a full recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic. The popularity of the museum helped it to become one of the leading tourist attractions in Spain based on the number of google reviews in 2021.

Where do the museum visitors come from?

One in two people who visited the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao in 2022 were Spanish residents. More than half of these domestic visitors were from the Basque Country itself. Among international visitors, France accounted for the largest share that year: 14 percent of the total number of museumgoers. Meanwhile, the United States was the most popular non-European place of residency among international visitors to this cultural center that year.

Origin of the Guggenheim museums

The Guggenheim Museum Bilbao opened to the public in October 1997, and it is one of the three museums named after Solomon R. Guggenheim, a U.S. businessman and art philanthropist. Guggenheim established a foundation in 1937 carrying his name, which owns the Guggenheim museums around the world. The other two centers are based in New York, the birthplace of the Foundation’s creator, and Venice.