Pamplona - Mercado de Santo Domingo

In 74 BC, the Roman city was founded by Pompejus on the site of a local settlement. The city served to secure the Pyrenees crossing from Roncesvalles.

Pamplona was destroyed several times in the course of its history:

466 by the Visigoths, 542 by the Franks, 778 by Charlemagne, 924 by Abd ar-Rahman III and in 1521 during the Franco-Spanish War by troops of Francis I.

Its location on the Way of St. James from France gave the capital of the Kingdom of Navarre a boom in the 11th century. With the division of Navarre, the city ultimately came to Spain.

After the conquest of the country and its incorporation into Castile in 1512-1515, Pamplona became one of the outposts of the Spanish crown on the French border. Its mission for 300 years was to secure the border against a possible invasion from France. Fortifications and walls were a vital system of defense, but at the same time prevented the city from expanding.


The Mercado de Santo Domingo has its origin in 1565 , the year in which the City's general market began.


In 1769, a new large building was built. In 1862 the entire building became a food market. In 1875, a raging fire destroyed the market, which was later rebuilt. In 1877 the current market was inaugurated on the same site as the old one, whose structure remains.

This makes it one of the five oldest active food market buildings in Spain.