Where eight days every July the streets fill with white-and-red runners and charging bulls, Hemingway immortalised the festival in his first novel, and a medieval walled citadel contains a perfectly preserved star fortress that still rings the entire city
Pamplona is a city of 210,000 in the foothills of the Pyrenees, capital of Navarre. The Festival of San Fermín (6–14 July, UNESCO Intangible Heritage nominee) is one of the world's most famous festivals: the Encierro (Running of the Bulls) runs through 848m of cobblestone streets every morning at 8:00am for eight consecutive days, with participants running alongside six fighting bulls. Ernest Hemingway attended the festival in 1923, 1924, 1925, 1926, and 1931 — his 1926 novel The Sun Also Rises (Fiesta in the UK) made Pamplona internationally famous. Outside July, the walled medieval city is…
Pampaelo (Pamplona) was founded as a Roman military camp around 75 BCE by the general Gnaeus Pompeius Strabo (father of Pompey the Great) — hence the name. The Visigoths then the Moors held the city; in 778 CE, Charlemagne's retreating army sacked the city (prompting the Basques to ambush his rearguard at Roncesvalles — the event immortalised in the Song of Roland). The Kingdom of Navarre was one of medieval Europe's most significant realms, at times controlling lands from the Bay of Biscay to the Mediterranean. The feast of San Fermín (the first bishop of Pamplona, martyred 303 CE) was linke…