Most people know Pamplona for one thing: the bulls. They picture Hemingway's drunk Americans sprinting through cobblestone streets in white shirts and red sashes, and they figure the city only matters for eight days in July. This is wrong. Pamplona is a city that has been holding its ground for 2,000 years, and the running is just one chapter in a much longer story.
The city sits in a natural bowl where the Pyrenees start their climb toward France. The Romans built a settlement here because the valley narrows and controls the passage between the mountains and the Ebro River plain. They called it Pompelo. The Visigoths came, then the Moors, then the Franks under Charlemagne. By 824, the Kingdom of Navarre was born here, and Pamplona became a frontier capital between Christian Europe and Muslim Spain. That borderland identity never really left. Walk the old town today and you will hear Spanish and Basque spoken in the same sentence. Street signs give both names: Calle Mayor and Kale Nagusia point to the same narrow lane.
The first thing to do is walk the walls. Pamplona has the most complete medieval fortifications in Spain, and unlike the postcard versions in other cities, these walls are not just a decorative backdrop. You can walk almost five kilometers along the top, looking down at red-tile roofs, garden patios, and the green curve of the Arga River. The path is called the Ronda del Castillo. It takes about 90 minutes at a normal pace, and it is free. Start at the Portal de Francia, the gate that faces north toward the mountains, and work your way clockwise. You will pass the Plaza del Castillo, the city's living room, where locals meet for coffee under the arcades at Café Iruña, founded in 1888. Hemingway drank here. The menu still lists his name, but the waiters do not make a fuss about it. Order a café solo and a churro if it is morning. If it is afternoon, get a kalimotxo — red wine and Coca-Cola over ice, the Basque-country drink that horrifies wine purists and satisfies everyone else.
The cathedral sits at the highest point of the old town, and it is worth the climb up Calle Curia. Santa María la Real is a Gothic cathedral with a Neoclassical facade that the city added in the 18th century because they thought the original looked too plain. The result is slightly awkward, like a medieval knight wearing a powdered wig. Inside, the cloister is the prize. It is 14th-century Gothic, with pointed arches and carved capitals that show biblical scenes mixed with daily life — a baker, a musician, a man fighting a pig. The refectory has a Moorish ceiling that survived from the building's earlier life as a mosque. Admission is €5, and the guided tours in English run at 11:00 AM and 4:00 PM. The guides are volunteers from a local history society, and they know details that no audio guide will tell you — like which pillar still bears the mark of a cannonball from the Napoleonic siege of 1813.
Downhill from the cathedral, the Navarre Museum occupies a 16th-century hospital building on Calle Cuesta Santo Domingo. This is where you learn what Pamplona actually is, beyond the bull-running cliché. The collection includes Roman mosaics from a villa outside the city, medieval altarpieces, and Goya portraits of the Navarrese nobility who bankrolled Spain's wars. The museum is free on Saturdays and €2.50 other days. It closes for lunch from 2:00 to 5:00 PM, a schedule that still annoys tourists but makes perfect sense to locals.
The Citadel is another must, and it is entirely free. This star-shaped fortress was built by Philip II in the 16th century after he conquered Navarre and wanted to make sure the locals stayed conquered. The architect was an Italian, Giacomo Palearo, and the design is textbook Renaissance military engineering — angled bastions, dry moats, and walls thick enough to absorb cannon fire. Today the moats are gardens, and locals jog the perimeter at dawn. The southern bastion houses a small museum about the fort's history, including the 1830 explosion that killed 600 people when a powder magazine caught fire. The crater is still visible in the northeast wall, patched with lighter-colored stone.
The bullring, Plaza de Toros, holds 19,720 people and was built in 1922. Even if you do not care about bullfighting, the architecture matters. It is the second-largest bullring in Spain, after Madrid's Las Ventas, and the stone facade was designed by a Navarrese architect who studied in Paris. Tours run daily at 10:30 AM and cost €6.50. You see the pens where the bulls wait before the run, the chapel where fighters pray, and the infirmary where the gored are patched up. The museum inside has the blood-stained outfit of a fighter who was killed here in 1985, and a video monitor showing every encierro — the bull run — since 1980. Watch five minutes of that footage and you will understand why the city requires participants to be over 18, sober, and mentally competent.
Beyond the old town, the Ensanche district spreads in a grid pattern that was revolutionary in 1910. The city tore down the southern walls and built wide avenues, apartment blocks, and the University of Navarre, which now dominates the city's intellectual life. The campus is private and run by Opus Dei, a Catholic organization that makes some visitors uncomfortable. The architecture is modernist, and the museum inside has a surprising collection of Picasso ceramics and a Caravaggio that the university bought in the 1970s. Entry to the museum is free, but you need to book online two days ahead.
Food in Pamplona is Navarrese, not Basque, though the two cuisines share ingredients. The city is surrounded by vegetable gardens that produce some of Spain's best tomatoes, peppers, and asparagus. The local specialty is txistorra, a thin chorizo that is fried and served in a bread roll. A good one costs €2.50 at any bar on Calle San Nicolás. Pintxos — the Basque-style small plates — dominate the old town. Bar Gaucho on Calle Espoz y Mina is a local institution. Their tortilla de patatas is made fresh every hour, and the piece with pimiento costs €3.20. Bar Txirrita on Calle San Agustín does a stuffed pepper with bacalao that locals argue about — some say it is the best in the city, others say it has gone downhill since the original owner retired in 2019. Go and decide for yourself. It costs €4.00.
The wine is Navarra D.O., and it is underrated. The region makes excellent Garnacha rosado and robust Tempranillo. A glass in any old-town bar costs €2.00 to €2.50. Bodegas de la Real on Calle San Antón has been in business since 1862 and sells bottles starting at €8.00. Ask for the crianza from the 2019 vintage — it won a gold medal in Barcelona in 2022 and still costs under €15.00 retail.
The Hemingway trail is unavoidable but not unpleasant. He first came in 1923 and returned nine times. Hotel La Perla on the Plaza del Castillo still rents the room he used, number 217, for €180 per night in July and €95 the rest of the year. The lobby has his typewriter under glass. Bar Hemingway on Calle Estafeta is a tourist trap with overpriced cocktails. Skip it. The real Hemingway bars are the ones he actually drank at: Café Iruña, Café Roch on Calle Comedias, and the now-closed Bar Toro where he supposedly wrote part of The Sun Also Rises in 1925. The building is a clothing store now, but a small plaque marks the spot.
The Camino de Santiago passes through Pamplona on its way west to Santiago de Compostela. Pilgrims enter the old town through the Portal de Francia and walk down Calle Mercaderes, stopping at the parish church of Santa María la Mayor for a stamp in their credential. If you want to walk a section yourself, the stretch from Pamplona to Puente la Reina is 22 kilometers and takes five to six hours. It crosses the Alto del Perdón, a wind-scoured ridge with steel sculptures of pilgrims that make for a dramatic photograph. The path is well marked with yellow arrows, and there is a bar at the summit that serves cold beer and bocadillos for €5.00.
Timing matters. July 6 through 14 is San Fermín, and the city triples in population. Hotel prices quadruple. A room that costs €60 in March goes for €250 in July. Book a year ahead if you want to run, or come in late September for the San Fermín de Aldapa, a smaller festival that locals prefer because the tourists have gone home. May is asparagus season, when restaurants serve white asparagus from the Navarre gardens in dozens of preparations. October is mushroom season — perretxikos, níscalos, and boletus fill the markets and the menus. November is rainy and quiet, which is when the university students dominate the bars and the city feels most like itself.
The practical details are straightforward. Pamplona has no international airport. Fly to Bilbao and take the bus — it is two hours and costs €18.00. Or fly to Madrid and take the high-speed train to Zaragoza, then a regional train north for €25.00 total and just over three hours. The city center is walkable. The old town is pedestrian-only. Taxis are cheap but unnecessary. The bus to the university district costs €1.35.
What to skip: the bull-running museum at the bullring is worth the tour, but the separate Museo del Encierro on Calle Santo Domingo is a tourist trap — €7.00 for mannequins in white shirts and a video loop. The Hemingway statue on the plaza is new, installed in 2018, and locals roll their eyes at it. The souvenir shops on Calle Estafeta sell overpriced white outfits year-round. Buy a red sash for €2.00 at any supermarket if you must have one.
Pamplona does not need the bulls to justify its existence. It has walls that held back armies, a cathedral that saw kingdoms rise and fall, and a culture that is neither fully Spanish nor fully Basque but something harder to name and more interesting to explore. The city is at its best in the early morning, when the joggers are on the walls, the bakeries are opening, and the only sound is the church bells arguing with each other across the old town. That is the Pamplona worth knowing. The bulls are just the loudest part of the story.
By Finn O'Sullivan
Irish storyteller and folklorist. Finn hunts for the narratives that do not make guidebooks—the pub legends, the family feuds, the neighborhood heroes. He believes every street corner has a story if you know who to ask.