Pamplona is permanently associated with a nine-day festival in July that has been going on since the fourteenth century and was brought to global attention in 1926 by a novelist who came eight times and never actually ran. The city is more than the encierro, though the encierro is genuinely extraordinary, and neither aspect of it suffers from being considered alongside the other. Outside July, Pamplona is a handsome, well-preserved Navarrese city with excellent food, a serious cathedral, and a position on the Camino de Santiago that gives it a particular kind of purposeful energy.
A little history
Pamplona was founded by the Roman general Pompey in the first century BC as Pompaelo — a military base on the route through the Pyrenees — and has been strategically significant ever since. In the early middle ages it became the capital of the Kingdom of Navarre, an independent mountain kingdom that maintained its sovereignty for centuries despite the competing ambitions of France, Aragon, and Castile. The old city walls, the citadel, and the cathedral are all legacies of those centuries of political and military consequence. The festival of San Fermín dates from the fourteenth century, when celebrations for the city’s patron saint were combined with an existing tradition of driving bulls through the streets to the bullring. Ernest Hemingway attended in 1923 and again in 1924, publishing The Sun Also Rises in 1926 — a novel that depicted Pamplona’s festival with enough vividness to alter its character permanently. He returned six more times. International visitors have been arriving in July ever since.
What to see
The Cathedral (Catedral de Santa María la Real) was built in the Gothic style over the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries on the site of an earlier Romanesque cathedral. The interior is striking — tall, light, and French Gothic in character, without the visual clutter that accumulates in some medieval cathedrals over subsequent centuries. The cloister is considered one of the finest Gothic cloisters in Spain: delicate stone tracery, a sense of stillness, and a notable lack of crowds compared to the nave. The façade facing the city is Neoclassical, added in the eighteenth century and quite different in spirit — functional rather than beautiful, though the contrast is interesting. The María Bell, cast in 1584 and weighing nearly twelve tonnes, is the second largest bell in Spain and still in use. Admission approximately €5; check current hours with the cathedral.
The Museum of Navarre (Museo de Navarra) is housed in a former sixteenth-century hospital and holds a varied and undervisited collection covering the region’s archaeology and art from the Roman period to the twentieth century. Highlights include Romanesque capitals rescued from the old cathedral, a first-century Roman mosaic, and the Abauntz Map — a fragment of bone engraved around 14,000 years ago depicting what are believed to be landscape features of the local valleys, making it one of the oldest maps in the world. Admission approximately €2. Worth two hours.
The Citadel (Ciudadela) is a star-shaped Renaissance fortress built in the sixteenth century and considered one of the best examples of that style of military architecture in Europe. It no longer defends anything and is now a large, agreeable public park used by locals for walking, picnics, and outdoor events. The ramparts are walkable and offer good views of the surrounding city. Entry to the park is free and it is open throughout the day.
Plaza del Castillo is the heart of the old city — a large, arcaded square where Pamplona’s café life concentrates. Bar Iruña, on the north side of the square, opened in 1888 and was Hemingway’s preferred haunt; it is a genuinely handsome café with high ceilings, Belle Époque detail, and good pintxos, and it manages to accommodate the Hemingway pilgrimage without losing its dignity entirely. The square is the social centre of the San Fermín festival and worth sitting in at any time of year.
The encierro — what it actually involves
The Running of the Bulls takes place each morning of the San Fermín festival (7–14 July) at 8am sharp. Six bulls and six steers run approximately 850 metres through the medieval streets of the old town from their holding pens on Calle Santo Domingo, past the Town Hall on Plaza Consistorial, around the tight corner at Calle Mercaderes (known as Dead Man’s Corner, the most dangerous section of the course), up the long straight of Calle Estafeta, and through a narrow entrance corridor into the Plaza de Toros. The run typically lasts between three and five minutes.
Watching from street level is free but requires arriving very early to secure a position and then staying put — once the barriers are sealed you cannot enter. Paid balconies on Estafeta offer better sightlines at varying prices. The afternoon bullfights in the Plaza de Toros begin at 6:30pm; tickets range from approximately €30 for sun seats to €200 for shade seats close to the ring.
People are injured during the encierro every year. The event is not a performance or a simulation; the bulls weigh around 600 kilograms and are moving at speed through streets that are not designed for them. This is said not to discourage attendance but in the interest of clarity.
Getting there
Pamplona is approximately three hours from Madrid by train and around three and a half hours from Barcelona. The train station sits in the northeastern part of the city; buses and taxis connect it to the old town (around 1.5 kilometres). By car, Pamplona is directly accessible from both the French border and from Bilbao and San Sebastián to the west.
The city is also a major stop on the Camino Francés — the main pilgrimage route from France across northern Spain — so it has good infrastructure for walkers and a cosmopolitan character year-round.
Cost and hours
Old town and citadel park: free. Cathedral: approximately €5; check current hours (typically 10:30am–7pm in season). Museum of Navarre: approximately €2; closed Mondays. Plaza del Castillo: free at all times. San Fermín runs from 6 July (opening chupinazo rocket at noon) to 14 July. Bull run tickets (balcony viewing): varies by position and provider; book well ahead for July.