Art & Culture
Cultural Heritage
The Munoa estate is home to a villa built in 1860 as a summer residence by Juan Echevarria La Llana, twice mayor of Bilbao, on a small hill overlooking the Ibaizabal-Nervión estuary and set in extensive gardens between the localities of Cruces, Burtzeña, Llano and Lutxana, in Barakaldo.
It stands in a green space made up of an English-style garden covering over 60,000 square metres, with more than 600 trees which open out before the front of the palace. The building is one of the few French-style constructions that survive in the Greater Bilbao area, a notable example of middle-class family architecture.
In the course of its history it was the headquarters of the Basque government health department during the Spanish Civil War and subsequently the home of Horacio Echevarrieta until his death in 1963. The interior of the Munoa villa has remained the same since then, taking visitors back half a century.
Since 2014 it has belonged to Barakaldo town council. The Basque government listed the Munoa estate as a "monumental site" in 2017.
