Maman and La Salve Bridge

Walk beneath her legs and look up: between them hangs a sac full of marble eggs. This spider more than nine metres tall is Maman, by Louise Bourgeois, created in 1999. There are several casts around the world; Bilbao’s joined the museum’s collection and has stayed on as a neighbour of the river.

1An ode to a mother

Bourgeois grew up in her family’s tapestry restoration workshop in France, and her mother, Joséphine, was the one who repaired the fabrics. “The spider is an ode to my mother,” she wrote: a weaver, patient and protective. What looks threatening at first sight was, for the artist, a tribute.

2La Salve

Overhead runs La Salve Bridge, opened in 1972 and designed by the engineer Juan Batanero; it was the first cable-stayed bridge in Spain. Gehry did not hide it: he wrapped the museum around it and raised a tower beside it. In 2007, for the Guggenheim’s tenth anniversary, the French artist Daniel Buren added the “Red Arches”.

According to tradition, this bend in the river was where sailors returning to port first glimpsed the Basilica of Begoña, and there they would pray or sing a Salve Regina.

For decades its official name was Príncipes de España, but to Bilbao people it was always La Salve, and since 2016 that has been its official name too.

3What to look for

• The marble eggs beneath the spider’s body.
• Buren’s red arch over the bridge.
• The tower Gehry built next to the bridge.