Walk the Citadel's five bastions — San Antón, La Victoria, San Juan, Santa María and Santiago — from the Vuelta del Castillo park

Walk the full 825m of Calle Estafeta, the most famous stretch of the San Fermín bull-running route

Find the Hemingway statue outside the Plaza de Toros

Order a coffee at Café Iruña on Plaza del Castillo, open since 1888

A Renaissance star fortress and a narrow medieval street that becomes the world's most famous bull run for nine days each July — Pamplona outside San Fermín is a quiet walled city with both still there to see.

Pamplona: The Citadel and the Bull-Run Streets

Walk across the 11th-century bridge, which is the whole reason the town exists

Find the monument at the junction where the Francés and the Aragonés become one road

Work out who built the bridge and why nobody can say which queen it was

Go into the church of the Crucifijo, built by the Templars, and find the Y-shaped crucifix

Walk a stretch of the Camino out of town westwards and watch how the pilgrim traffic doubles here

Two routes cross the Pyrenees from France — the Camino Francés over Roncesvalles and the Camino Aragonés over Somport — and they merge just before this town, which is why every pilgrim on both routes walks through it. The Romanesque bridge over the Arga that gives the place its name was built in the 11th century, by tradition at the order of an unnamed queen of Navarre, specifically so that pilgrims could cross safely. A monument at the edge of town marks the junction with the inscription that from here on there is only one way to Santiago.

Puente la Reina: Where the Two Caminos Meet

Walk up to the Ibañeta pass at 1,066 metres, a crossing into Iberia used since prehistory and still the Camino's way in

Work out what happened in 778, and how it turned into the Chanson de Roland three hundred years later

Find out who actually destroyed the rearguard, and who the poem says did it

Go into the collegiate church of Santa María and the chapel of Sanctiu Spiritus beside it

Watch the pilgrims arrive at the end of the first Spanish stage, which is the hardest one on the whole Camino Francés

In 778 the rearguard of Charlemagne's army was destroyed in a pass in these mountains. Three centuries later that ambush had become the Chanson de Roland, the founding poem of French literature, with the Basques who actually did it rewritten as Saracens. Roncesvalles is also where the Camino Francés enters Spain: pilgrims cross from Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port over the Ibañeta pass at 1,066 metres, a natural crossing used since prehistory, and the collegiate church here is the first stop. The pilgrim hostel has been operating in some form for the better part of a thousand years.

Roncesvalles: The Pass, the Song and the Camino

Find the Palace of the Kings of Navarre, one of the few Romanesque civil buildings left in Spain

Climb the steps to San Pedro de la Rúa and look at the cloister

Work out what Estella was for: a burgh founded around 1090 and deliberately settled with Franks under a charter copied from Jaca

Go out to the Fuente del Vino at Irache and take the pilgrim's measure, not more

Find out what Estella was in the Carlist wars and why it mattered

Estella was founded around 1090 by Sancho Ramírez of Aragon and Pamplona, the first Pamplonese burgh to be formed, beside the older settlement of Lizarra — and it filled with settlers from elsewhere, many of them Franks from southern France, under a charter modelled on the one the same king had given the Franks of Jaca. It has more Romanesque civil architecture than almost anywhere in Spain, including the Palace of the Kings of Navarre, one of the very few Romanesque secular buildings left in the country. It was the Carlist capital in the 19th century. Just outside, at Irache, a winery keeps a fountain that runs wine for pilgrims.

Estella: The Town Built for the Camino

Go into the church and find the casket at the head of it holding the heart of Charles II of Navarre

Walk the fortified gallery round the outside of the church and look out over the Bardenas

Work out what Cisneros ordered demolished and what survived the order

Find out about the Estudio General Charles II began here and why it stopped

Eat the sugared almonds and the migas the village is known for

Ujué sits on a hill in the Navarrese Ribera with a fortified church of two crenellated towers looking out over the Bardenas and, on a clear day, the Pyrenees. The kings of the house of Évreux were attached to it: Charles II, known to history as the Bad, gave his heart to the Virgin here and it is still kept in a casket at the head of the church. He also started a university in the village, abandoned for lack of money. Cardinal Cisneros ordered the fortress demolished; the church with its towers and the parish house survived the order. The romería from the surrounding villages still walks here every year.

Ujué: A Fortified Church With a King's Heart In It

Walk the towers and the wall walks and work out how much of the silhouette is decoration rather than defence

Find the black mulberry inside, which is protected as a natural monument of Navarre

Work out what was lost in 1813, when Espoz y Mina had the palace burnt to deny it to the French

Find out what Charles III put in here that a castle would never have had — gardens, a menagerie, hanging gardens

Come in summer for the Festival de Teatro Clásico, which uses the palace as its main venue

Charles III of Navarre turned an existing castle at Olite into a permanent royal seat in the 15th century and gave it everything a court of the period was supposed to have: towers, gardens, moats, hanging gardens, even a menagerie. The silhouette of towers above the walls is why it is probably the most emblematic civil building in Navarre and its most visited monument. In 1813 the guerrilla leader Espoz y Mina had it burnt, to stop Napoleon's troops fortifying it — so the towers survive and the interior decoration and the gardens are gone for good.

Olite: The Palace the Kings of Navarre Built for Themselves

Find the valley's coat of arms on house fronts and work out that every household here is entitled to it

Work out what hidalguía meant for a whole valley rather than a family

Drive between several of the fifteen places — Errazu, Arizkun, Irurita, Elbete — and see how scattered they are

Find the Bozate quarter at Arizkun and find out who lived there and why they were kept apart

Walk into the beech woods above the valley towards the French border

Baztán is a single municipality of 376 square kilometres made up of fifteen separate places, each with its own scattered hamlets and farmsteads, in the Navarrese mountains near the French border. Sancho III the Great made it a lordship, and because everyone born in the valley held hidalgo status, every household is entitled to use the valley's arms — which is why you find the same shield carved on the front of almost every house and farmstead, varied by the taste of whichever century put it up. Elizondo is the capital, at 200 metres.

The Baztán Valley: Fifteen Places and a Coat of Arms

Walk from the Santa María Gate to the San Nicolás Gate through the walled old town

Find the balconied fishermen's houses of the Marina quarter, painted in the traditional red, green and blue of Basque boats

Find the 10th-century quadrangular tower at the core of the Castle of Charles V, now the Parador hotel on Plaza de Armas

From the harbour promenade, spot Pheasant Island in the Bidasoa — the world's smallest condominium, which switches sovereignty between Spain and France every six months, and the site of the 1659 Treaty of the Pyrenees

A walled fishing port on the Bidasoa estuary, facing France across a river that has marked the border since 1659 — and hiding, in the water between the two banks, the world's smallest condominium territory.

Hondarribia: The Border Castle on the Bidasoa

Walk the meadows and woods among the 40 outdoor sculptures and put your hands on them — touching is allowed

Find Buscando la luz, 8 metres high and 22 tonnes, and Lotura XXXII, 64 tonnes

Go inside Zabalaga, the farmhouse of 1543 Chillida restored, for the work in wood, alabaster and wool

Find the Peine del Viento, Chillida's sculptures on the rocks at the far end of La Concha in San Sebastián

Eduardo Chillida found Zabalaga, a farmhouse of 1543 near Hernani, in ruins, restored it with the architect Joaquín Montero, and laid his work out in the 13 hectares of meadow and wood around it. The museum opened on 16 September 2000, closed at the end of 2010 in the financial crisis and reopened on 17 April 2019. Outside stand 40 sculptures in steel and granite, from Estela V at about a metre high to Lotura XXXII at 64 tonnes, and visitors may touch them; the fragile work in wood, alabaster and wool is kept inside the farmhouse.