Viz­caya Bridge strad­dles the mouth of the Ibaiz­a­bal estu­ary, west of Bil­bao. It was designed by the Basque archi­tect Alber­to de Pala­cio and com­plet­ed in 1893. The 45-m-high bridge with its span of 160 m, merges 19th-cen­­tu­ry iron­work­ing tra­di­tions with the then new light­weight tech­nol­o­gy of twist­ed steel ropes. It was the first bridge in the world to car­ry peo­ple and traf­fic on a high sus­pend­ed gon­do­la and was used as a mod­el for many sim­i­lar bridges in Europe, Africa and the Amer­i­ca only a few of which sur­vive. With its inno­v­a­tive use of light­weight twist­ed steel cables, it is regard­ed as one of the out­stand­ing archi­tec­tur­al iron con­struc­tions of the Indus­tri­al Rev­o­lu­tion.