Vitoria-Gasteiz, with more than 230,000 inhabitants, is found in the heart of the historical territory of Álava and is the capital of the Basque Country, a region of great historical, cultural and economic vitality.
Culture, together with town planning, the environment and social initiatives are the city's identifying marks, as it is the first city in the State to adopt the Agenda 21, a programme that helps the sustainable development of territories to advance.
Vitoria-Gasteiz has a considerable monumental heritage. The medieval quarter, declared a historical monument in 1987, is one of the most beautiful and best conserved in the whole of the north of the peninsula. Besides that, the city conserves significant artistic testimonies, from gothic to neoclassic. The expansion of the city in the 19th and 20th centuries adapted the traditional aesthetics to the current necessities, creating architectural spaces and structures of unquestionable beauty.
The Santa Maríaa Cathedral Foundation. ARTIUM the Basque Museum-Centre of Contemporary Art and the Montehermoso Cultural Centre are some of the city's most important cultural institutions, whose network of civic centres is relevant at a European level. Vitoria also has a wide and varied cultural offer, with consolidated events at an international level, such as the Vitoria-Gasteiz Jazz Festival.
Gastronomy is extremely important in Vitoria-Gasteiz. The city offers the possibility of sampling the area's traditional dishes as well as the most advanced creations in the new Basque cuisine.
Vitoria-Gasteiz is a green city, with more than forty square metres per inhabitant of areas of parks and gardens, making it the capital of the State with the most consolidated green space. 150 species of different trees can be seen, and we must mention the green belt that surrounds the city, which can be covered by bike or on foot.
Given its natural heritage, Vitoria-Gasteiz occupies an outstanding place in the International Healthy Cities Agreement and has been awarded numerous national and international prizes and honourable mentions, which support the environmental quality of the area. Vitoria-Gasteiz's green belt was selected by the UN to be among the 100 best world actions in the Third Catalogue of Good Practices. This is the recognition of a city entirely conceived as an ecosystem.
