Grove Koger
When I travel, one of the things I look forward to is being able to look out over my surroundings, to orient myself in relation to everything around me. And so one of the first things we did when we visited the city of Bilbao in the Basque Country in 2019 was to take a trip up its funicular.
Bilbao’s residents know it as simply “du funikularra,” but officially it’s the Artxandako Funikularra, or Artxanda Funicular in English, and it links the city, which has grown up along the Nerbioi River, to the summit of Artxanda Mountain. As I’ve mentioned before in World Enough, a funicular is a cable-operated railway that runs on steep slopes. It consists of a pair of carriages connected to the opposite ends of a single cable and involves, in this case, a single set of rails that splits into two for a short distance at the midpoint, allowing the two carriages to pass each other. Boarding stations are built at each end of the rails.
Proposals for just such a connection date from 1901, when reaching the summit took an hour on foot, but finances were lacking, and so the project was postponed until 1915. That year, Swiss company L. Von Roll began construction, and the funicular was opened to the public on October 7, 1915. And so a once-arduous ascension could now be accomplished, while comfortably seated, in seven minutes.
Over time, the Artxanda Funicular has suffered some setbacks. During the Spanish Civil War, the upper sections were bombed by Francisco Franco’s Nationalist forces, and service didn’t resume until July 18, 1838. Then a serious accident in June 1976 closed the funicular until 1983. Today, however, the new and improved funicular runs faster, and the ride (about 1.1 miles) takes just 3 minutes.
The summit of Artxanda is home to restaurants, a park, exhibits (including one of the funicular’s original gears, which you see above) and even a hotel. And the view over the city includes the amazing Guggenheim Bilbao Museum (below), designed by Canadian-American architect Frank Gehry.
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