Pamplona
Capital Of Navarre, A Roman Foundation On The Camino Frances, Known Internationally For The San Fermin Fiesta And Its Encierro, And Retaining A Complete Star Shaped Renaissance Citadel · Pamplona, Navarre
Known worldwide for nine days in July and largely unvisited for the other three hundred and fifty-six. San Fermin runs from the sixth to the fourteenth, Hemingway wrote it into The Sun Also Rises in 1926, and the encierro, the running of the bulls, happens each morning over eight hundred and change metres of closed street before the animals are killed in the ring that evening. It is genuinely dangerous, it is genuinely contested, and both facts belong in any honest description. What the fame obscures is that Pamplona the rest of the year is a compact, prosperous Navarrese city with a complete star-shaped citadel turned into a park, a Gothic cathedral with one of the finest cloisters in Spain, and a serious pintxos culture. It also sits on the Camino Frances, so pilgrims walk through the old town every morning. Come in September and it is a different proposition entirely: a quiet walled city with a cathedral cloister, a star fort full of joggers, and pilgrims coming through at first light.
Plaza del Castillo, Pamplona, Navarre, 31001, Spain
NO OPENING TIME HERE WAS CHECKED, and the city has none: the old town, the encierro route and the Citadel park are public and always open. What has hours are the cathedral and museums, which take a LONG MIDDAY BREAK and close Mondays. THE OVERRIDING SCHEDULE IS SAN FERMIN, 6 to 14 JULY, when the encierro runs at eight each morning, streets close daily, and normal opening, pricing and availability cease to apply across the whole city.