Gernika Peace Museum

Bombing-of-Guernica museum that became a wider peace centre

What started in 1998 as a memorial to the 1937 bombing has grown into one of Europe's most thoughtful peace museums. The ground floor focuses specifically on the Condor Legion raid of 26 April 1937 — the immersive bombing-reconstruction room is genuinely disorienting — while the upper floor broadens out into the wider questions of post-conflict reconciliation, with rotating exhibitions on Hiroshima, Sarajevo, Rwanda, and Northern Ireland.

The collection includes survivors' testimony recorded on video, fragments of bomb casings recovered from the site, and a full-size reproduction of Picasso's Guernica with annotations explaining each figure.

things to do museum
A story
The museum was rebuilt on the site of the original mayor's house, levelled in the 1937 raid. Its centrepiece — a darkened room in which the bombing is reconstructed through sound, image, and shaking floor — was developed with survivors who insisted that the smell of smoke be included.

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