Most descriptions of Pamplona’s Navarrería neighborhood stop at “the oldest part of the old town.” That is true, but it skips the one fact that actually explains what a visitor is looking at today: in 1276, the Navarrería was destroyed so completely by its own neighboring boroughs that the ground sat empty, growing wheat and grass where houses had stood, for nearly fifty years. Almost everything standing in the neighborhood now, street plan included, is the result of a fourteenth-century rebuild.
This matters because the Navarrería is not a museum piece tucked away from daily life in Pamplona. Part of its rebuilt footprint is Calle Estafeta, the longest straight stretch of the modern encierro and the single most photographed street of San Fermín. Runners and spectators cross this ground every July without any indication that they are standing on the site of a medieval civil war, or that the street itself is a relatively recent addition to the route.
This account draws on the history of the three medieval boroughs published directly by the Ayuntamiento de Pamplona, the cross-referenced academic sourcing behind the Spanish-language historical record of Pamplona’s medieval boroughs, and the site-specific history of Calle Estafeta itself, an underused angle almost no English-language guide to the neighborhood covers.
What “Navarrería” Actually Meant
Medieval Pamplona was not one city. It was three separate, legally distinct settlements packed onto the same hilltop terrace above the Río Arga, each with its own walls, its own mayor, its own charter, and, for long stretches, open hostility toward the other two. The Navarrería was the native, autochthonous settlement, tied directly to the cathedral and governed by the bishop rather than the crown. Around it sat the Burgo de San Cernin, chartered in 1129 for Frankish merchants and artisans arriving along the pilgrim roads, and the Población de San Nicolás, founded shortly after and populated largely by Franks as well.
The name’s origin is genuinely disputed, not settled trivia. One reading, favored by the Basque scholar Arturo Campión, traces it to the Basque naba (basin or hollow) combined with herri (town or people), evolving through Latin-speaker usage into Navarrería. A second reading holds that the name simply meant “city of the Navarrese,” distinguishing the native population from their Frankish neighbors next door. Both explanations appear in the serious historical record with academic support behind them, and neither has been settled definitively.
The site itself long predates any of this. It was Pompaelo, founded by the Roman general Pompey in 75 BC. Archaeological work around the cathedral has traced the Roman cardus maximus to what is now Calle Dormitalería and the decumanus to Calle Curia, meaning the Roman grid still underlies the street plan a visitor walks today. Around the year 1000, King Sancho III “el Mayor” is credited with re-securing and repopulating the settlement around the cathedral, placing it under direct episcopal jurisdiction as a farming community distinct from both the merchant class that would soon arrive and the herding communities of the surrounding mountains.
The War That Erased It
Rivalry between the three boroughs was not a quiet, symbolic thing. It was chronic and, at points, violent for well over a century before it reached its breaking point. A disputed strip of “no man’s land” between the Navarrería and San Cernin, granted to the Navarrería by royal decree in 1189 and contested by the Franks ever since, was one recurring flashpoint. A twenty-year truce signed in 1213 did not hold. By 1222, residents of San Cernin had already attacked and burned San Nicolás’s fortified church.
The breaking point came in 1276. King Henry I of Navarre had died two years earlier, leaving the throne to his three-year-old daughter, Juana. San Cernin and San Nicolás aligned with the crown’s governor and with French royal troops. The Navarrería aligned with part of the Navarrese nobility, who sought support from Castile and Aragon and framed their cause as defense of the Navarrería’s own charter, customs, and independence. Fighting broke out that summer and escalated through September, when French reinforcements arrived against the Navarrería.
The result was not a skirmish. It was annihilation. The Navarrería, along with the small adjoining settlement of San Miguel and the neighborhood’s Jewish quarter, was sacked and burned. Chronicles from the period describe the cathedral’s own cloister and chapter refectory being turned into stabling for horses and dogs during the pillage. Afterward, according to the historical record, no covered structure remained standing anywhere in the Navarrería. Grass could be cut and wheat sown on ground where a neighborhood had stood days earlier.
Fifty Years of Ruins, Then a Rebuild
The Navarrería did not simply recover. It sat effectively empty for close to fifty years. A formal royal commitment to repopulate the district came in 1319, and the actual rebuilding privilege followed in 1324, nearly half a century after the destruction. When reconstruction finally began, it partially respected the old layout: the area south of Calle Curia, which still tracks the ancient Roman cardus and decumanus, was rebuilt closer to its original plan than the ground to the north. The small burgo de San Miguel, destroyed alongside the Navarrería in 1276, was never rebuilt at all and disappears from the historical record entirely.
Even decades later, the scars showed in the numbers. A household count from 1366, the Libro de fuegos, recorded only 166 households in the rebuilt Navarrería, compared with 452 in San Cernin and 350 in San Nicolás. Much of the rebuilt footprint had gone to church and cathedral property rather than housing, a legacy of the neighborhood’s original identity as an episcopal settlement.
This is where the connection to the modern encierro becomes concrete rather than symbolic. The grid of streets rebuilt south of Calle Curia after 1324 includes Calle Estafeta, today the longest straight section of the bull run and its single most recognizable stretch. The street carried several earlier names tied to a royal castle that once stood nearby, and later took the name calle de San Tirso after a local church. It only became “Estafeta” in the eighteenth century, when a post office opened on it. The bulls have run down it only since 1867; before that date, the route went through Calle Chapitela instead. Calle Mercaderes, the street that carries runners from Santo Domingo toward La Curva and into Estafeta, also sits inside this same rebuilt neighborhood, historically serving as the connecting route between the Navarrería and its Frankish neighbors across the old dividing line. That street did not carry the name Mercaderes for most of its own history either; see how it got, lost, and reclaimed its name.
From Rivalry to Union
The friction between the three boroughs did not end with the 1276 war, though it never again reached that scale. Physical walls continued to divide Navarrería, San Cernin, and San Nicolás from one another for generations. It took King Charles III, known as “el Noble,” until 1423 to finally dissolve the divisions with a single royal act, merging the three into one municipal government under one council, one seal, and shared revenue. The new town hall built to seal the union was placed deliberately on the old neutral ground between the three former rivals, a physical statement that the divisions were over even before the last of the internal walls came down. The full story of that agreement, and the peace efforts that failed before it succeeded, is its own piece of Pamplona’s history.
What Stands There Now
Today’s Navarrería is anchored by the Catedral de Santa María la Real, one of the most architecturally complete cathedral complexes in Spain, preserving its cillería, refectory, and chapter house alongside the main church and cloister. Most of the structure is Gothic, built between the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries, with a Neoclassical west facade added in the late eighteenth century. Nearby stands the former Palacio de los Reyes de Navarra, now the Archivo Real y General de Navarra, restored in the early 2000s by the architect Rafael Moneo. The eighteenth-century Palacio Episcopal, the Iglesia de San Agustín, and the Basílica de San Fermín de Aldapa all sit within the neighborhood’s boundaries as well.
The old Colegio de los Jesuitas now houses Pamplona’s Escuela Oficial de Idiomas, a genuinely current use for a historic building rather than a preserved relic. A Jewish quarter is documented inside the neighborhood from at least the twelfth century; it was renamed Barrio Nuevo after Navarre’s Jewish population was expelled in 1499. Walk the neighborhood today and the physical evidence of all of this is still visible: narrow streets on uneven, sloped ground, surviving stretches of the sixteenth-century city walls along the northern and eastern edge, and a concentration of pintxos bars that makes the district one of the city’s natural stops for anyone working through Pamplona’s bar-hopping food culture.
Frequently Asked Questions
What does “Navarrería” mean?
The origin is disputed among historians. One theory traces it to the Basque words naba (basin or hollow) and herri (town), while another holds it simply meant “city of the Navarrese,” distinguishing the neighborhood’s native residents from the Frankish merchants who settled the two boroughs next door. Both readings appear in the academic record, and neither has been conclusively settled.
Is Calle Estafeta part of the Navarrería?
Yes. Calle Estafeta sits inside the historical footprint of the Navarrería, in the section of the neighborhood rebuilt after the district’s near-total destruction in 1276. The bulls have only run down this specific street since 1867, when it replaced Calle Chapitela as part of the encierro route.
What was the Guerra de la Navarrería?
It was a war fought in 1276 between the Navarrería, backed by part of the Navarrese nobility, and the neighboring boroughs of San Cernin and San Nicolás, backed by the crown’s governor and French royal troops. The Navarrería lost, and the neighborhood was destroyed so completely that it remained largely unbuilt for close to fifty years.
When did Pamplona’s three medieval boroughs unite?
King Charles III issued the Privilegio de la Unión on 8 September 1423, merging the Navarrería, San Cernin, and San Nicolás into a single municipal government. The physical walls separating them took longer to come down than the legal union did.
Every article on the Encierro blog is authored or reviewed by active bull runners with direct experience in Pamplona.