Ibaigane: Athletic Club's Headquarters
The Athletic Club headquarters are
situated at the Palace of Ibaigane, a magnificent early twentieth
century building located right in the centre of Bilbao, just metres away
from the Guggenheim Museum.
The palace is a square building with an
almost square floor plan, 24 meters by 22, with an elevation of three
levels, well differentiated in the texture from its simple but
interesting façade, crowned by a four-slope roof.
In spite of its classic façade, the inner
skeleton of this palace is metallic; that is to say, modern for its
time. Aside from the outer walls, the building is erected using iron
beams, covered by wood on which masonry joist fillers rest. These iron
pillars, with nut rivets -there is no welding-, were constructed at
Altos Hornos de Bizkaia, a fundamental factory in the industrialization
of Biscay.
Equally interesting is the structure and
configuration of the interior. The three levels of the house are opened
to a courtyard crowned by a great stained-glass ceiling; the work of
Anselmo de Guinea, one of the most outstanding artists in the country at
the time.
The different suites and rooms, decorated
with noble Italian style jambs, fine woods, and red marble from Ereño,
Venetian floors, mouldings, pan forms and chimneys, all face this
central patio, measuring seven by six meters. A chapel with its own
organ completes the unfolding of ornaments and services of one of the
most emblematic residences of early twentieth-century Bilbao. Currently,
all these rooms are used as offices for the accounting department,
communications department, documentation centre, marketing, management,
meeting rooms...
Ibaigane, where Athletic Club's
administrative functions take place, where the Board of directors' meets
and club members are attended to, possesses, according to the Basque
Government, sufficient values to be declared a Classified Monument.
