La Ciudadela, the star-shaped Renaissance fortress that every guidebook lists among Pamplona’s essential sights, is not open during San Fermín. The city’s own listing puts the closure at roughly three weeks bracketing the festival, covering all nine days of the run along with the days before and after it. Visitors who build a fiesta-week itinerary around the free English-language write-ups that rank for “Ciudadela Pamplona” won’t learn this until they’re standing at a locked gate.
That gap matters because of what the closure actually protects. The Pamplona citadel isn’t shut for routine maintenance. Its interior is where the city stages the nightly fireworks that light up the sky over San Fermín, and a working pyrotechnics site inside a public park is not something Pamplona keeps open to foot traffic. Knowing that turns a frustrating locked gate into something closer to the truth of the place: a 450-year-old fortress that spent centuries controlling who could get close to it, and still does, just for a different reason now.
This account draws on the Ayuntamiento de Pamplona’s own official listings, in both Spanish and English, cross-checked against each other and against the Spanish and English Wikipedia entries for the citadel, which are themselves built on academic histories of Pamplona’s fortifications. None of the five highest-ranking English-language guides to La Ciudadela checked before writing this piece, including one 2026-dated travel guide that describes the park as open “from early morning until late evening,” mention the San Fermín closure at all.
A Fortress Built to Watch the City, Not Just the Border
Felipe II ordered the citadel’s construction in 1571, part of a broader plan to renovate and strengthen Pamplona’s defenses after the Spanish conquest of the Kingdom of Navarre. The design came from Italian military engineer Giacomo Palearo, known as “el Fratín,” working with Vespasiano Gonzaga y Colonna, the viceroy of Navarre. Their model followed the same Italian Renaissance defensive theory recently applied at the citadel of Antwerp: a regular pentagon, with a bastion at each point angled so that defenders on any one bastion could cover the ground in front of its neighbors. The five bastions carried their own names: San Antón, El Real, Santa María, Santiago, and Victoria.
Two of those five bastions, San Antón and Victoria, faced inward toward Pamplona itself rather than outward toward the French border. That was not an oversight. A 1569 report to Felipe II from the engineer Antonelli argued that Pamplona needed a fortress not only against outside threats but against its own population, still resentful in living memory of losing an independent kingdom. The Venetian ambassador Contarini reported at the time that Navarrese sentiment ran hostile to Spanish rule and sympathetic to the deposed king Juan de Albret. The citadel, in other words, was built partly to watch the city it stood inside.
Construction wrapped by 1645, though the fortress kept growing more sophisticated for another century. Exterior “half-moon” ravelins went up in 1685 and again in the first half of the 1700s, engineered by Juan de Ledesma using the poliorcetic system developed by Vauban, the military engineer who modernized French fortification design under Louis XIV. In Basque, the fortress carries its own name entirely separate from the Spanish: Iruñeko Zitadela.
Taken Without a Single Shot Fired
For a fortress built on this scale, La Ciudadela saw remarkably little combat. It was rarely besieged, and when it did change hands, force usually had nothing to do with it. The clearest example came on the night of February 15 to 16, 1808. French troops under General Jean Barthélemy D’Armagnac had already occupied Pamplona under the terms of the Treaty of Fontainebleau, ostensibly as allies passing through en route to invade Portugal. Napoleon had secretly ordered D’Armagnac to seize the citadel itself, part of a coordinated plan used against several Spanish strongholds that same season.
D’Armagnac’s men used the weather. A group of French soldiers, unarmed, approached the citadel’s gate at the hour the garrison normally distributed rations, and started throwing snowballs at each other in the fresh snow. The Spanish garrison, a small and poorly prepared volunteer force, found the display entertaining enough to let the soldiers get close. Grenadiers hidden nearby then produced weapons concealed under their clothing, disarmed the guards, and took the citadel without firing a shot. French troops used near-identical tricks that same year to seize the citadels of Barcelona and Figueres and Mota Castle in San Sebastián.
The citadel changed hands again in 1823, though that time it took five months and a bombardment. Liberal Spanish forces held out inside against the French army sent to restore absolute monarchy, surrendering only after a sustained shelling of the city that began in early September. Earlier still, in the 18th century, the fortress held a small number of high-profile political prisoners, among them the Conde de Floridablanca, Charles III’s leading minister, and the Marqués de Leganés.
From Fortress to Free Park
La Ciudadela kept its official military designation for nearly four centuries, until a government decree on May 21, 1964, formally ceded the historic complex to the city of Pamplona. The physical handover, covering the fortress and its surrounding open ground, a combined 275,840 square meters, was completed on July 23, 1966. Rather than deciding the site’s future by decree, the city put the question to residents directly: a 1971 public consultation asked Pamplonicas what to do with the grounds, and the result favored keeping them as green space built around the restored historic buildings, over rival proposals to recreate a miniature medieval town inside the walls or convert the site to sports use.
The fortress was declared a National Historic-Artistic Monument on February 8, 1973, and in 2012 it won the European Union’s Europa Nostra Cultural Heritage Award in the Conservation category, along with the public choice award for the same year. Several of the surviving military buildings now serve as municipal exhibition halls: the Polvorín, an 18th-century gunpowder store; the Pabellón de Mixtos; and the Sala de Armas, designed in 1725 by the same engineer, Jorge Próspero de Verboom, who designed Barcelona’s citadel.
The grounds today, combined with the surrounding Vuelta del Castillo green belt that rings the old fortifications, hold 19 outdoor sculptures by Navarrese and Basque artists, including several pieces by Jorge Oteiza, whose largest collection sits in a museum outside the city but who has permanent public work standing on these grounds as well.
Why the Gates Close for San Fermín
The Ayuntamiento de Pamplona’s own listing for the citadel states the closure plainly: the park and its exhibition halls shut down for San Fermín, with the Spanish-language listing giving the window as July 1 to July 23 and the English-language version giving July 4 to July 21, both marked as estimates that can shift year to year. Either way, the closure runs for more than three weeks, swallowing all nine days of the festival along with a buffer on each side.
The reason is stated just as plainly on the same official page: “durante las fiestas de San Fermín se disparan desde su interior las colecciones de fuegos artificiales,” meaning the fireworks displays go off from inside the citadel throughout the festival. That is the same nightly Concurso Internacional de Fuegos Artificiales that draws crowds to Vuelta del Castillo, the park circling the citadel, widely considered the best public spot in the city to actually watch the show. The citadel itself isn’t the viewing area. It’s the launch site, and a working pyrotechnics staging ground is not a place the city can safely keep open to strolling visitors, however good the grounds normally look in July.
Visiting La Ciudadela the Rest of the Year
Outside San Fermín, access is free and the park keeps generous hours: Monday through Friday from 7:30 to 21:30, Saturdays from 8:00 to 21:30, and Sundays and holidays from 9:00 to 21:30. The exhibition halls run a shorter schedule, Tuesday through Saturday from 11:30 to 13:30 and 18:00 to 20:30, and Sundays and holidays from 11:30 to 13:30, closed Mondays.
Two entrances serve the grounds: the main gate on Avenida del Ejército, facing the historic city center, and the Puerta de Socorro, facing Vuelta del Castillo. The site sits close to the same ground where Pamplona’s own fortified history runs deepest, a short walk from the walls that kept the city sealed inside them until 1915. For anyone visiting outside the festival window, it remains exactly what the city voted to keep it as in 1971: open lawns, mature trees, free public sculpture, and the preserved outline of one of the more complete Renaissance fortresses left standing in Europe.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is La Ciudadela open during San Fermín?
No. The Ayuntamiento de Pamplona’s own listing closes the park and its exhibition halls for roughly three weeks bracketing the festival, with the city’s Spanish-language page citing July 1 to July 23 and its English-language page citing July 4 to July 21, both noted as estimates that can vary by year.
Why does La Ciudadela close during San Fermín?
Because the nightly fireworks shows of the festival’s Concurso Internacional de Fuegos Artificiales are launched from inside the citadel grounds. The closure is a pyrotechnics staging and safety measure, not routine maintenance.
Is La Ciudadela free to visit?
Yes, outside the San Fermín closure window. The park itself has no entry fee at any time of year; some special exhibitions inside the halls may charge separately.
Where is the best place to watch the San Fermín fireworks if the Ciudadela is closed?
Vuelta del Castillo, the public park that rings the citadel’s outer walls, is widely considered the best vantage point in the city, since the fireworks are launched from the citadel’s interior but visible over its walls.
Every article on the Encierro blog is authored or reviewed by active bull runners with direct experience in Pamplona.