If we tell you that the surroundings created by the Saint Anton Church and the bridge of the same name are a landmark of the city, you should take us seriously. The church and bridge are both featured in the ancient coat of arms of the city of Bilbao. We almost need to go back to the time of the founding of the town to find the original stones of each of the constructions.
The church of San Antonio Abad ( Saint Anthony the Great) that would be its full name was completed in 1433 and was erected on the remains of a fortress built a century earlier. It can be said without fear that it is of Gothic style, although several of its elements belong to the Renaissance like the main gate, designed by Juan de Garita in 1544, or the balcony which was added a few years later.
But the most striking element, for sure, it’s the bell tower, decorated in a Baroque style and which was completed by Manuel de Capelastegui in 1775, a time when Mozart was already earning his bread composing operas.
We could conclude then, that the temple is a kind of pizza, with a base of Gothic dough covered by a mixture of ingredients from other trends and other centuries. Without a doubt, a place that deserves a little bit of your attention.
The Bridge of San Anton or Puente Viejo (Old Bridge), also deserves it. However, the one you see now is not the same one that connected the two banks of the estuary around the 1300s, and from which the delinquents were thrown with a stone tied around their necks. That one was taken away by history, so fond of destroying everything with its wars and catastrophic episodes.
In 1870, they started to build a new bridge, but as you may have guessed there was another war just around the corner, in 1873. The Carlist conflict had the project on hold for some years. Finally, it was put into operation until another military misfortune, the one in 1936, blew the bridge down. And… back to rebuild the bridge again.
As you can see the current Old Bridge is not so old, and it inherits a name that in reality belongs to its ancestors. But, be that as it may, the Church and the San Anton bridge hold a big part of Bilbao’s history and symbolise its resistance and its perennial will to survive in the face of wind, tide and howitzers. Do you not think they deserve to be on the city’s coat of arms?
