The ancient city of Pamplona, chief town of the province of Navarra and the most important town in the Spanish Pyrenees, lies on a hill above the left bank of the Río Arga, at the western end of the Pyrenees.
History
The settlement of Pompaelo, which became Pamplona, is said to have been founded by
the Roman general Cn. Pompeius Magnus in the winter of 75 B.C. during his campaign against Sertorius. The Goths conquered the town in the fifth Century but were driven out in the eighth Century by the Moors, with whom the inhabitants had concluded a pact. This was the assembly point of the Arab army which was defeated at Tours and Poitiers in 732. In 778 Charlemagne slighted the town's defenses, and thereafter it sank into insignificance for several Centuries. The pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela on the Way of St James gave Pamplona a fresh lease of life, and three separate settlements developed - the Navarrería in which the old-established inhabitants lived, the new district of San Cernín, mainly inhabited by French merchants and craftsmen, and another new district, San Nicolás. Antagonisms between these three communities flared up in the 13th-15th centuries, when the kings of Aragon and Castile were at odds with the French kings of Navarre over the possession of Pamplona and sought allies in the different parts of the town, which fought against each other in changing coalitions. These conflicts were finally settled in 1423, but the inhabitants of Pamplona maintained their stout resistance to any aggressor, as the Castilians found out in 1512 and the French in 1808.
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