The oldest museum in the Basque Country, founded in 1902 and housed in a sixteenth-century Dominican convent at the foot of Monte Urgull in San Sebastian's old town. A major expansion by Nieto Sobejano Arquitectos, completed in 2011, added a contemporary building with a perforated aluminium facade designed to weather and develop a vegetal patina, creating a dialogue between the historic convent and a distinctly modern architectural intervention. The museum presents Basque society and identity from prehistory to the present through ethnographic, archaeological, and fine art collections. The convent's former church, its walls covered with monumental canvases by Catalan artist Jose Maria Sert depicting Basque history and mythology, provides the most dramatic exhibition space. The Sert paintings, installed in 1932, combine religious iconography with nationalist symbolism in a style of muscular Art Deco realism. Ethnographic galleries explore traditional Basque rural life: fishing, agriculture, ironworking, pastoral transhumance, pelota, and the distinctive elements of Basque material culture including wooden farmhouse architecture, textiles, and funerary customs. The collection documents a culture that maintained unique language, legal systems, and social organisation for millennia despite political incorporation into larger states. Fine art holdings span Spanish and Basque painting from the fifteenth century through the contemporary period, with strength in Basque sculptors including Eduardo Chillida and Jorge Oteiza. The museum's old-town location places it beside San Sebastian's fishing harbour, the Basilica of Santa Maria, and the network of pintxos bars for which the Parte Vieja is internationally celebrated. Entry is free to Basque residents. A museum cafe overlooking the harbour serves pintxos and light meals using ingredients sourced from the nearby La Bretxa market. Temporary exhibitions in the new wing address contemporary Basque art and design with a particular focus on the intersection of traditional craft and digital fabrication.

Type: Tourist Attraction

Address: Plaza Zuloaga 1, Busan, South Korea, 20003

Website: https://www.santelmomuseoa.eus/

Opening Date: 01/01/1902