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• New methodology to characterise the heating demand of building stocks at city level. • The approach is applied to Bilbao city, by constructing 17 archetype buildings. • Evidence-based calibration and validation procedures increase models' reliability. • Aggregated model results only differ around 4% from real historical data. • The methodology is verified completely feasible with existing public data sources. In the current transition towards a net-zero GHG emissions economy, residential building sector is one of the sectors with highest potential for energy efficiency. In order to assist the implementation of energy saving policies, in which the role of local authorities is crucial, the bottom-up engineering approach is the most suitable method for a reliable characterisation of the energy consumption in an existing building stock. In the present paper a methodology is proposed to characterise the space heating energy consumption of a residential stock at city level, based on archetype buildings. The methodology is focused on addressing the challenges which often such approach involves. An evidence-based calibration procedure is proposed to address occupant behavioural patterns. Attention is also given to the constructed models results validation process, by comparing them with collected real data. The methodology is applied to the residential building stock of the city of Bilbao, where seventeen typologies of archetype buildings are constructed. The results demonstrate the practicability of accurately reproducing the existing space heating energy consumption of a city-scale residential building stock with available public data sources. The methodology has been conceived to be easily replicable to any city. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]