Pamplona Audio Tours

Pamplona is a well-ordered, handsome capital of Navarre for 357 days of the year. Then July arrives and the city transforms into something Ernest Hemingway described in 1926 and the world has been booking flights to ever since. The San Fermin festival begins on July 6 at noon with a rocket fired from the Ayuntamiento balcony, and for the next eight mornings six bulls charge through the cobbled streets of the old city from the corrales to the Plaza de Toros. The 875-meter encierro takes roughly three minutes. The rest of the day is cider, txikiteo bar-hopping through the old town, and dancing in the squares until sunrise.

Outside of July, Pamplona rewards visitors who look past the fiesta reputation.

The old walled city built on a plateau above the Arga River retains its medieval street plan, and the 16th-century Ciudadela -- a massive Renaissance star fort now used as a park -- is one of the finest examples of military architecture in Spain. The Gothic Cathedral of Santa Maria la Real holds the remarkable alabaster tomb of King Charles III of Navarre, and the Museum of Navarre in the former medieval hospital on Cuesta de Santo Domingo holds Roman mosaics and Goya paintings in the same building.