▶ Watch the guide The best things to do in San Sebastián are a pintxo crawl through the Parte Vieja, the full arc of La Concha, the 1912 funicular up Monte Igueldo, the climb to the Castillo de la Mota on Urgull, and Chillida's Peine del Viento at the end of Ondarreta. Three days is the right length: one for the old town and the bay, one for the beaches and the hills, one for the coast road or a starred table.
San Sebastián is Donostia in Basque, a city of 188,000 wrapped around a shell-shaped bay on the Bay of Biscay. It burned almost completely in 1813 and was rebuilt as a royal summer resort, which is why a working Basque port carries Belle Époque railings and a bathing beach in the middle of it.
The reason most people come, and it works as a route rather than a meal: one pintxo and one small glass per bar, then on. Some bars trade on what is laid along the counter, others cook to order from a board, and the second kind eats better. Start around 8pm, allow four or five bars, and pay as you go.
La Concha is the shell the city is named for, closed by Urgull on one side, Igueldo on the other and Santa Clara island in the mouth. The walk that matters is the promenade above the sand, with its white railing and Belle Époque lamps, about 40 minutes end to end. The tide changes the beach completely.
The postcard view of San Sebastián is taken from the top of Igueldo: the whole bay, the island in the middle and the old town stacked under Urgull. The funicular opened in 1912 under Queen María Cristina and still runs wooden cars. At the summit is an old-fashioned amusement park and the terrace that is the point.
Urgull is the wooded hill behind the old town, and the paths up start beside the aquarium or at Santa María. Twenty minutes of switchbacks reaches the Castillo de la Mota, with gun batteries scattered down the slopes. The castle holds the Casa de la Historia, and a 12-metre Christ stands above it. Free.
Three rusted steel claws bolted into the rocks where Ondarreta runs out, set in 1977 by Eduardo Chillida. The setting is Peña Ganchegui's: a terrace of stone steps with blowholes cut into it, so a rough sea forces spray up through the paving under your feet. That is when to come. In flat calm it is metal on a rock.
The oldest museum in the Basque Country, in a sixteenth-century Dominican convent with a perforated extension bolted on in 2011. The old half earns the ticket: the church nave is lined with eleven vast sepia and gold canvases by Josep Maria Sert. The collection runs from prehistoric stelae to industrial Gipuzkoa.
Across the Urumea from the centre, Zurriola faces open ocean rather than the sheltered bay, which makes it the surf beach and the young one. Schools and board hire line the sand, and the swell picks up through autumn. Swimming here is a different proposition from the bay, with real waves and rips, so read the flags.
Two translucent glass cubes stand where the Urumea meets Zurriola beach, designed by Rafael Moneo and opened in 1999. He called them two beached rocks, and they read that way from the sand: opaque by day, lit from within after dark. Every September the building hosts the festival that awards the Concha de Oro.
At the end of the harbour quay under Urgull, in a building that has been a museum of the sea since 1928. Two things at once: a naval and fishing collection upstairs, complete with a whale skeleton, and a modern aquarium below with a walk-through tunnel. The Cantabrian tanks hold most of what is on the pintxo counters.
The island in the mouth of the bay is a ten-minute motorboat ride from the harbour and a genuine change of register: no cars, a small beach that appears at low tide, a lighthouse and a path to a viewpoint. Boats run through the summer and stop out of it, so this is a June to September plan.
A tiny room that makes exactly two tortillas a day and writes down names half an hour before each. The other order is a txuleta.
No counter display at all. Everything is cooked to order from a board, and the braised veal cheek is what the room is built on.
The mushroom pintxo is the one: wild fungi seared on the plancha with an egg yolk on top. A full restaurant downstairs, and the bar fills fast.
A narrow bar with the menu chalked on the wall and nothing on the counter. Order the veal-cheek kebab and the Idiazabal risotto.
Anchovies about a dozen ways on bread: with sea urchin, with crab, with papaya. A single-subject bar with no real competition.
Santiago Rivera created the burnt Basque cheesecake here in 1990. The wheels sit on the bar all day, scorched outside and barely set in the middle.
Opposite the Santa María basilica, with tables in the square. The newer style of pintxo bar, where the cocktails get the same attention as the food.
Three stars in Lasarte-Oria, twenty minutes southwest. The most classically precise of the three, and the training ground for the region's chefs.
Andoni Luis Aduriz's two-star kitchen in a farmhouse at Errenteria, closed for months each year to develop the next menu. Provocative rather than comfortable.
One star, in a lane in the old town, and the easiest of the starred rooms to get into at short notice. Built on the same Cantabrian fish.
A small, sharply modern tasting-menu room in the Centro from an Argentine-Italian chef. Counter seats face the pass.
The bay beach and the postcard: shallow, sheltered by the island, backed by the Belle Époque promenade. Best for a swim in flat water and a long walk at low tide.
The western continuation of the same bay, past the Miramar Palace and under Igueldo. Wider, quieter, more families, and the Peine del Viento at the far end of it.
Open ocean across the river in Gros. Surf schools along the back of the sand, real waves and rips, and the youngest crowd of the three city beaches.
A pocket of sand on the island in the bay that shows at low tide, reached by motorboat in summer. No cars, and a path to the lighthouse.
The Basque maritime museum in the eighteenth-century Consulado tower on the quay. Small, free, and precise on whaling and shipbuilding.
The classic view of the bay, from the terrace at the top of the 1912 funicular. An old-fashioned amusement park shares the summit.
Twenty minutes of switchbacks from the old town to the Castillo de la Mota and the statue of Christ. Free, wooded, and the closest big view.
Chillida's three steel forms in the rocks at the end of Ondarreta. Come at high tide with a swell running and the paving blows spray at you.
The sea wall around the base of Monte Urgull, joining the harbour to the Zurriola side. In heavy weather the waves come clean over it.
The wooded hill east of Zurriola, laced with paths and old mirador terraces, and quiet in a way the other two hills never are. The climb starts from the top end of Gros.
The Camino del Norte leaves the city over Ulia and drops to the fishing village on its harbour channel, about three hours on foot. Bus back.
The old town under Urgull: a grid of narrow streets rebuilt after 1813, and the densest concentration of pintxo bars anywhere. Loud until late, and priced accordingly.
Across the Urumea behind Zurriola beach. Surf shops, a bar scene as good as the old town with shorter queues, and the neighbourhood most locals send you to for dinner.
The nineteenth-century grid laid out when the walls came down: wide streets, the Buen Pastor cathedral, the shopping, and the shortest walk to La Concha.
The western end, behind Ondarreta and under Igueldo. Residential, calmer, better value for a stay, and a 25-minute walk or a short bus ride from the old town.
South of the centre along the river, around the Reale Arena and the stations. Almost no visitors, ordinary prices, convenient if you arrive by rail.
The hillside quarter behind the Renfe station, anchored by Tabakalera and Cristina Enea park. The least polished of the six and the one changing fastest.
An hour and a quarter west by bus, or longer on the scenic Euskotren line. The Guggenheim and a very different Basque city, industrial not resort.
A fishing village on a headland 25 km west, where whole turbot is grilled over coals in the street and Txakoli is made above. Balenciaga's birthplace.
The long surf beach 20 minutes west on the Euskotren line, and the easiest escape from a crowded La Concha in August.
A walled town on the French border with a hilltop castle, a fishing quarter of painted balconies and its own pintxo street. Buses run all day.
A single street of houses on stilts along a harbour channel east of the city, reached by bus and a small ferry. Victor Hugo lodged here.
The French Basque coast starts 20 km east. Euskotren’s Topo runs to the border at Hendaye and French trains carry on from there, so both towns are a morning trip.
The Basque slice of Rioja, ninety minutes south, with Laguardia's walled centre and cellars by Gehry and Calatrava. This one wants a car.
The patron saint day and the loudest 24 hours here: a hundred companies of drummers march the streets from midnight to midnight.
Carnival opens with a parade of townspeople dressed as Hungarian tinkers, banging hammers on cauldrons in early February.
Spain's oldest jazz festival, running since 1966 in late July. Paying concerts at the Kursaal, free stages on Zurriola beach.
A month of classical music and dance through August, in the Kursaal and the old town churches. The oldest festival in Spain.
The city's big week in mid-August, built around the fireworks competition fired from a barge in the bay after dark.
The Basque festivals through early September: bertsolari verse duels, stone-lifting, wood-chopping and dance.
Trainera rowing crews race in the bay on the first two Sundays of September, a contest held since 1879.
The film festival, in the last full week of September and the biggest in the Spanish-speaking world. The city books out.
The city airport is at Hondarribia on the French border, 22 km east, and handles mostly domestic routes. Buses reach the centre in 20 to 35 minutes.
Most international arrivals come through Bilbao, 100 km west. Pesa runs a direct coach to San Sebastián in roughly 75 minutes, hourly, without entering Bilbao.
Renfe's Estación del Norte runs to Madrid, Barcelona and the border. Euskotren's narrow gauge is the useful local one: the Topo east to Hendaye, the coast line west to Bilbao.
There is no metro. Dbus runs the city buses, including line 16 up to Igeldo. The centre, the old town, both bay beaches and Gros are within a 30-minute walk of each other.
A skewer of olive, pickled guindilla and Cantabrian anchovy, invented around 1947. Salty, sour and hot.
A thick chop from an old dairy cow, salted and grilled over embers, served rare and carved at the table.
The soft triangles from under a hake's jaw, cooked in olive oil and garlic until the sauce turns creamy.
Salt cod poached slowly in olive oil and garlic, then swirled until its gelatine emulsifies the oil.
Spider crab picked and cooked back into its shell with onion, leek, tomato and brandy, then browned.
A fisherman's stew of bonito, potato, onion and choricero pepper, made aboard the boats in tuna season.
Smoked hard cheese from raw sheep's milk, made in the mountain pastures inland. Served with quince paste.
Created at La Viña in 1990: baked hot enough to scorch the top and collapse the middle, with no base.
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