Virtual tour of Provincial Palace

Foral Palace is the official seat of the Bizkaia Provincial Council, the governing body of the historical territory of Bizkaia, led by the General Deputy.

The peculiar foral (charter) system is a result of the legal and political history of Bizkaia, which by means of the Fueros (the set of regulations that shape the legal framework and institutions of Bizkaia since 1452) gives it a capacity of self-organisation and autonomy that is distinct from other regions.

A difference that continues to this day, among others, through the Economic Agreement and the capacity of Bizkaia’s provincial institutions to determine and collect the region's taxes.

This building, the main seat of the provincial institution, was designed by the architect Luis Aladrén Mendivil (Zaragoza, 1852 – Donostia/San Sebastian, 1902) in 1891 to house the Bizkaia Provincial Council after the loss of the Fueros in the last Carlist War. It was the first public building built in the new Ensanche area of Bilbao.

It is a richly ornamented building in the French Neo-Renaissance style, its interior decorated with magnificent marble, stained glass, furniture and noble woods, and its rooms home to an important collection of portraits and valuable Basque works of art.

A highlight is the large stained glass window of the main staircase, from 1900, created by the Catalan master glazier Antonio Rigalt, based on a design by Biscayne painter Anselmo de Guinea. It is an Allegory of Bizkaia represented before the seat of the region’s parliamentary body, the General Assembly, which meets in Gernika under the shade of its Tree, the foral oak, symbol of the freedoms and rights of the Biscayne and Basque people.