Pamplona

Located south of the historic center of the city, the current place del Castillo was shaped over the centuries. No man's land between the three medieval nuclei for a long time (Navarrería, burgh of San Cernin and Población de San Nicolás), it became the parade place of the castle that Luis el Hutín ordered to be built in 1308. By that time there is evidence of jousting, tournaments, and popular entertainment, as well as bullfights, the first documented in 1385. 

After the conquest of Navarre and its incorporation into the Castilian crown, Ferdinand the Catholic chose the southern end of that area to erect a new fortress, a short-lived defensive construction, on whose site the Discalced Carmelite nuns were located in 1597, thus closing the southern flank of that wasteland. 

As time went by, the bullfighting festival was the fuse for thefinal training of the place, because in 1612 the Regiment decided to build the Casa del Toril on the west side and, in the middle of the century, put some plots of land on the place up for sale, so that during the second half of the 17th century and, above all, in the 18th century, several private houses were built, and it was definitively configured with a baroque appearance as a commercial, social and festive space. Important families such as the Sarasa, the Vidarte, the Goyeneche, the Íñiguez de Beortegui and the Loperena families built their residences here. At the end of the XVIII century, the source de la Beneficencia, by Luis Paret, was placed in the center.

The place did not obey a previous plan, from which derives its slightly trapezoidal plan and its facades of diverse designs, thus breaking the uniformity of the regular main squares. But it shared with them its function, its porticoed character and the abundance of balconies, which acted as tribunes for the shows, completed with bleachers on the arena. 

During the 19th century the place underwent important transformations. Some buildings were replaced, others renovated and even rebuilt, also introducing casinos, cafes and hotels to serve the new social uses. Urbanistically, the great change took place on the southern flank. On the site of the Carmelite nuns who abandoned their convent with the disentailment, between 1840 and 1851 a long neoclassical frontispiece was erected that housed the main theater in the center, flanked by the Navarrese credit on one side and the Diputación on the other, where the architects Manuel Ugartemendía and José Nagusia intervened. With the development of the II Ensanche, in 1931 the theater was demolished to open the current Avenida de Carlos III, which connected the place and the historic center with the new city. Shortly after, in 1943, the bandstand was located in the center.