The café under the arcade on Pamplona's Plaza del Castillo, open since 1888 and named a dozen times in Ernest Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises — the table where his characters wait out the days before the bulls.
Café Iruña opened on 2 July 1888, on the eve of San Fermín, under the arcade on the east side of the Plaza del Castillo. Pamplona's city council records it as the first establishment in the city lit by electric light, which in 1888 was reason enough to fill the arcade outside with people wanting to look at it. It has traded on the same square ever since.
Ernest Hemingway uses it more than any other room in The Sun Also Rises, his 1926 novel of expatriates following the bullfights from Paris to Pamplona. The Iruña is named twelve times across five chapters, always as the place the group returns to: they walk under the arcade to it on arriving in Pamplona, they arrange to meet there at noon, and they are still there when the fiesta has worn everyone down. Hemingway gives it the novel's most unhurried sentence about sitting still — coffee, wicker chairs, the cool of the arcade, the big square outside.
The tables in the book are white wicker, set out past the arcade to the edge of the street, and the narrator, Jake Barnes, spots the others at them from across the square: Lady Brett Ashley and Mike Campbell in Basque berets, Robert Cohn bare-headed in his spectacles. It is the novel's standing arrangement, and the reason the café can be read as a character rather than a backdrop.
The café still occupies the arcade at number 44. Inside, a corner is given over to Hemingway, with a life-size bronze of him leaning on the bar — a commemoration of the habit rather than a preserved table, and the café says as much itself.
We had coffee at the Iruña, sitting in comfortable wicker chairs looking out from the cool of the arcade at the big square.
Across the square the white wicker tables and chairs of the Iruña extended out beyond the Arcade to the edge of the street.
Chapter XVIII — noon at the Café Iruña, Pamplona at full boil
At noon we were all at the café. It was crowded. We were eating shrimps and drinking beer. The town was crowded. Every street was full.
The line does not name the café, but chapter XVII ends with Bill saying they will meet at noon at the Iruña and chapter XVIII opens at that noon. Pages later Mike tips the table and the dish of shrimps goes over in a crash.
From The Sun Also RisesOpens on 2 July, the eve of San Fermín — the first place in Pamplona with electric light.
Hemingway's first San Fermín, the trip that begins seven consecutive summers in Pamplona.
The July fiesta with the party that becomes the cast of The Sun Also Rises.
Ernest Hemingway publishes The Sun Also Rises, which names the Iruña twelve times, from the arrival in ch. X to the fiesta's end.
Still open on the Plaza del Castillo, with the Hemingway corner and its bronze at the bar.
Yes. Café Iruña is a real café on the Plaza del Castillo in Pamplona, open since 1888, and Ernest Hemingway names it directly in the novel — twelve times across five chapters. It is still trading on the same square.
Yes. It operates at Plaza del Castillo 44 in Pamplona's old town, on the original site. Inside there is a corner devoted to Hemingway with a life-size bronze of him standing at the bar.
It opened on 2 July 1888, the eve of San Fermín. Pamplona's city council records it as the first establishment in the city lit by electric light.
It is the group's base in Pamplona. They walk under the arcade to it when they arrive, arrange to meet there at noon, drink coffee in wicker chairs looking out at the square, and keep returning to it through the fiesta.
He frequented it during the Pamplona summers of the 1920s and 1930s, and Pamplona's own tourism material treats the association as established. The café's Hemingway corner commemorates that habit rather than preserving a particular table.
Plaza del Castillo 44, in Pamplona's old town, under the arcade on the east side of the square. The Plaza del Castillo is a few minutes' walk from the bull-running route along Calle Estafeta.
Setting of the story
Named twelve times across chapters X, XIII and XV–XVII — the group's base in Pamplona, from the walk under the arcade on arrival to the meetings arranged there at noon during the fiesta.
Frequented by
A fixture of his Pamplona summers from 1923 onward. Pamplona's city council treats the association as established; the café marks it with a Hemingway corner, which commemorates the habit rather than preserving a particular table.
The Friday Letter
The cafés, studios, and walk-up flats where the work was made — one story from the map in every letter.
