Vuelta del Castillo, the 300,000 square meter green ring that circles Pamplona’s star shaped Ciudadela, is usually described as a pleasant city park with a few sculptures and some old walls to look at. That description skips the reason the park exists in its current form at all. For nearly four hundred years, putting up any permanent structure on this land was against the law, because it was the military glacis of a working Renaissance fortress, a strip of ground kept deliberately empty so the soldiers inside the walls had a clear line of fire against anyone approaching.
That distinction matters for a visitor because it explains something odd about the park that guidebooks rarely connect to its history: the same open, unobstructed ground that once protected a fortress is now the reason locals consider Vuelta del Castillo Pamplona park the best free seat in the city for the nightly fireworks show during Sanfermines. The emptiness was never an accident of city planning. It was a defensive requirement that outlasted the fortress’s military purpose by decades, and it happens to be exactly what a few thousand people gathered on blankets need on a July night.
This account draws on the official historical and practical records published by the Ayuntamiento de Pamplona for both the Ciudadela and the Vuelta del Castillo park specifically, cross checked against the documented history of the Concurso Internacional de Fuegos Artificiales, the fireworks competition that has launched from inside these grounds every July since the year 2000.
The Fortress That Needed an Empty Ring Around It
King Felipe II ordered the construction of Pamplona’s Ciudadela in 1571, part of a broader effort to reinforce the city’s defenses following the model of Renaissance star forts recently built in Antwerp. The design came from Italian military engineer Giacomo Palearo, known by the nickname “El Fratín,” with input from Vespasiano Gonzaga y Colonna, then viceroy of Navarra. The result was a five pointed star with a bastion projecting from each point, a shape chosen specifically because it let defenders on any bastion cover the approaches to the bastions on either side of it, leaving no blind angle for an attacking force. Construction was substantially finished by 1645, and the defenses were further reinforced with additional exterior lunettes in 1685 and again in the first half of the eighteenth century.
A fortress built on this logic only works if the ground around it stays open. That open ring, sloping gently down toward the moats and walls, is called a glacis, and it is precisely the land Vuelta del Castillo occupies today. Any building placed there would have given an attacking army cover to approach the walls unseen, or blocked the defenders’ field of fire entirely. So for as long as the Ciudadela held military status, construction on the glacis was prohibited. The Ayuntamiento de Pamplona’s own record for the park states this plainly: it sits “en los glacis de la Ciudadela,” on the glacis of the Citadel, in a zone that slopes lightly toward the moats and walls. That restriction is also why, even though building was forbidden, walking was not. Pamplonicas have used the glacis as a promenade since at least the seventeenth century, strolling a strip of land that no one was permitted to develop.
Four Centuries Empty, Then Handed to the City
The Ciudadela kept its military designation for almost four hundred years. That ended on May 21, 1964, when General Francisco Franco, then head of the Spanish state, signed the decree transferring the fortress to the city of Pamplona. The formal handover of the full historic complex, fortress and surrounding grounds together totaling 275,840 square meters, was completed on July 23, 1966. Rather than settling the site’s future by decree, the council put the question to a public consultation in 1971, weighing several options: leaving it purely as green space, converting part of it into a small recreated medieval town, dedicating it to sports facilities, or preserving it as a green space with its historic buildings restored. Pamplona chose the last option, and the Ciudadela and Vuelta del Castillo together were declared a Bien de Interés Cultural, a National Historic Artistic Monument, on February 8, 1973.
The star shape has changed since its Renaissance origin. Two of the five original bastions, San Antón and La Victoria, the pair that pointed inward toward the city rather than outward toward attackers, were partially demolished in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to make way for Pamplona’s first major urban expansion and for the Avenida del Ejército, completed in 1971. The Palacio de Congresos y Auditorio de Navarra, still known locally as “Baluarte,” now stands on the remains of the old San Antón bastion. What survives today, the park’s official surface area, is 300,000 square meters according to the Ayuntamiento’s current park record, a figure closely echoed by independent local sources that put the total closer to 280,000 square meters when the old central bastion is included in the count.
What Is Actually in the Park Today
Vuelta del Castillo’s paved paths trace the old defensive perimeter, and the perspective is deliberate: walking the ring lets a visitor see the Ciudadela’s ravelins, counterguards, covered pathways, drawbridges, embrasures, and bastions from angles the fortress’s own interior does not offer. The trees lining those paths include maple, cypress, beech, copper beech, fir, pine, ash, elm, cedar, birch, and oak, part of the same municipal planting plan that connects Vuelta del Castillo to Pamplona’s other major green spaces, Media Luna Park and the Taconera Gardens to the north and Yamaguchi Park to the south, as stops on the city’s official Route of the Parks and Gardens. The six historic gates that once controlled entry through those same walls, and what happened to each of them, are covered in a separate guide to Pamplona\u2019s old city gates.
The gardens inside and around the fortress also hold an outdoor sculpture collection by Basque and Navarrese artists, including Jorge Oteiza, Basterretxea, Miralles, Aguirre, Larrea, Eslava, Ugarte de Zubiarráin, and Juarros. Oteiza’s work is significant enough in the region that he has his own dedicated museum in nearby Alzuza. Wildlife has settled into the old fortifications too: nest boxes scattered through the park support Eurasian scops owls, whose high, repetitive call is a common sound on park paths in late spring and summer nights, along with kestrels. The dry moats hold populations of midwife toads and Iberian green frogs, and geckos are common on the sun warmed stone walls.
Why the Emptiness Still Matters Every July
The same open ground that once existed to give soldiers a clear line of fire now gives festival goers a clear line of sight. Every year since 2000, Pamplona has run the Concurso Internacional de Fuegos Artificiales de San Fermín, an international pyrotechnics competition and, per its own organizers, the fireworks competition with the most consecutive nights of any in Spain: nine nights running, July 6 through July 14, each display fired at 23:00. The fireworks are launched from inside the Parque de la Vuelta del Castillo itself, on the grounds of the old Ciudadela, and the park closes to the public in the hours immediately around each show for safety before reopening once the debris is cleared.
The Ayuntamiento’s own official record for the park confirms the connection directly, describing Vuelta del Castillo as “un lugar preferente para disfrutar de los fuegos artificiales durante los Sanfermines,” a preferred place to enjoy the fireworks during Sanfermines. Tens of thousands of people gather on the grass around the park’s perimeter each of the nine nights to watch. The winning pyrotechnics designer takes home the Trofeo Meteoro and a cash prize, with second and third place also rewarded and a separate special mention prize awarded most years. It is a direct, traceable line from a sixteenth century military requirement to a twenty first century festival tradition: the land had to stay empty to protect the fortress, and staying empty is exactly what makes it work as a fireworks ground four hundred and fifty years later.
Visiting Vuelta del Castillo
The park itself is open and free to the public year round, with the exception of the fireworks closures noted above. Access to the fortress interior, where the Hiriartea Contemporary Culture Centre hosts exhibitions inside the old military buildings, is through the Puerta del Socorro. Exhibit hours run Tuesday through Saturday from 11:30 to 13:30 and 18:00 to 20:30, and Sundays and public holidays from 11:30 to 13:30. The park address is Avenida del Ejército, 1, and the Ayuntamiento de Pamplona publishes a route map connecting the Citadel grounds to the city’s other major parks for visitors who want to walk the full green corridor in one visit. The city’s bus station sits at one edge of the park, built partly beneath what was once the glacis, a short walk from the Casco Viejo and the start of the encierro route at Plaza Consistorial.
A visitor pairing the park with the rest of Pamplona’s old town has options nearby. The Museo de Navarra sits on the same walk into the Casco Viejo and covers the region’s archaeological and artistic collection in a fraction of the time a full Ciudadela visit takes. For getting oriented before setting out on foot, the interactive Pamplona bull run map shows exactly how close Vuelta del Castillo sits to the route the bulls actually run each morning of Sanfermines.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Vuelta del Castillo park free to visit?
Yes. The park is open to the public at no charge year round. The only regular exception is during the nightly fireworks displays of Sanfermines, when the area closes to the public for safety before and during each launch.
Where can I watch the San Fermín fireworks for free?
Vuelta del Castillo, the park surrounding the Ciudadela, is the traditional free viewing ground. The Ayuntamiento de Pamplona’s own tourism material names it directly as a preferred spot to enjoy the fireworks, since the display is launched from inside the park each night at 23:00 during the nine nights of the festival, July 6 through 14.
How big is Vuelta del Castillo park?
The official city council record lists the park’s surface area at 300,000 square meters, roughly 74 acres. It forms a ring around the pentagonal Ciudadela fortress at its center.
Why was Vuelta del Castillo never built on?
Because the land was the glacis of the Ciudadela, a defensive fortress completed in the 1600s. Military engineering required that the ground immediately surrounding the fortress stay clear of buildings so defenders had an open field of fire, a restriction that held until the fortress lost its military status in 1964.
The park is one part of a city whose reach extends well past its walls and its fiesta. Pamplona has also produced a documented run of footballers born within the city itself, a fact many general biography sites get wrong.
Every article on the Encierro blog is authored or reviewed by active bull runners with direct experience in Pamplona.