Peine del Viento

The Comb of the Wind was completed in 1976, a collaboration between the sculptor Eduardo Chillida and the architect Luis Pena Ganchegui: three Corten steel forms weighing about ten tonnes each, embedded into rocks at the western end of the bay where the city stops and the open sea begins, two on outcrops and one on the shore, arranged so they appear to reach for something. Ganchegui designed the terrace, a stepped pink granite platform, and set seven holes in it connected to chambers below the sea, so that in swell the water compresses air and blows it up through the openings in spouts, with sound. The sculpture has become the city's second emblem after the bay railing.

What you'll find

• The three steel forms - ten-tonne claws set into the rocks at the bay's end.
• The blowholes - seven vents in the terrace erupting in heavy swell.
• The granite terrace - a stepped platform designed as part of the work.
• The open sea - the point where the sheltered bay gives out.

When to go

Year-round; heavy swell, most likely from autumn to spring, is when the blowholes work and the waves break over the sculpture, which is the dramatic version. Calm summer days show it quietly.

Things to know

In calm weather the blowholes do nothing and the visit is a look at three sculptures. In heavy swell the terrace is genuinely dangerous and is closed, with waves sweeping it. It is a twenty-minute stop.

Nearby

Ondarreta beach and Monte Igueldo are alongside; La Concha runs east into the city.

Key facts