The Sun Also Rises: Paris to Pamplona

Paris is where the crowd drinks, and the Select is where the night usually ends up. When Brett climbs into Jake's taxi in the opening chapters, it is her first choice — "Oh, go to the Select" — and Jake tells the driver: "Café Select, Boulevard Montparnasse." The expatriates drift between the Select, the Dôme and the Rotonde, a short walk apart, trading gossip and insults until dawn. The Select still opens onto the same corner of the boulevard, wicker chairs and all.

Visitor guidance: Still a working café at 99 Boulevard du Montparnasse; the Dôme and the Rotonde are a short walk along the same boulevard.

Jake and his friend Bill Gorton leave Paris on "the morning train from the Gare d'Orsay", heading for the Basque country and a fishing trip before the fiesta. The book lingers on the ordinary pleasures of the ride — lunch in the dining car, the countryside going by, a crowd of American pilgrims bound for Rome. The station itself didn't survive as a station: in 1986 it reopened as the Musée d'Orsay, and its great iron-and-glass hall now holds Impressionist paintings.

Visitor guidance: Now the Musée d'Orsay; the old station clocks still hang in the main hall.

In Bayonne the two friends meet Robert Cohn — Brett's latest admirer and the man everyone will soon resent. They look round the cathedral ("nice and dim", Jake decides), buy a good rod cheap, and hire a car to drive over the border to Pamplona. It is a calm, sunny interlude, and the last moment the trip feels like a holiday among friends.

Location precision: The novel moves around the town; the pin marks the cathedral Jake and his friends visit.

Visitor guidance: Sainte-Marie Cathedral is in the old town and open to visitors outside services.

The car drops them on Pamplona's big square, in front of the Hotel Montoya. Before the fiesta the town is quiet, and Jake's favourite occupation is coffee at the Iruña, "sitting in comfortable wicker chairs looking out from the cool of the arcade at the big square." The hotel and its aficionado owner are invented, but the café is real: opened in 1888, it still stands under the arcades of the Plaza del Castillo, with a corner, the Rincón de Hemingway, given over to the writer.

Visitor guidance: Café Iruña is open daily on the Plaza del Castillo; expect crowds during San Fermín (6–14 July).

A rattling bus ride up into the Pyrenees, with wine passed round by Basque farmers on the roof, brings Jake and Bill to Burguete — a single street of white houses on a high plain near Roncesvalles. They stay at a cold little inn, eat hugely, play bridge with a friendly Englishman named Harris and argue happily about nothing. Hemingway knew the place first-hand: he lodged in Burguete in 1924 and 1925 for exactly this kind of fishing trip.

Location precision: The novel doesn't name the inn; the pin marks Hostal Burguete on the village's main street.

Visitor guidance: Burguete is on the Camino de Santiago, 3 km south of Roncesvalles.

The best days in the book happen here. Jake and Bill walk over the wooded hills to the Irati River, chill their wine in a spring, catch trout in the cold water and eat lunch in the shade, joking about irony and pity. Nobody is in love, nobody is drunk enough to be cruel. When the post finally brings word from Brett and Mike, the spell breaks and the pair head back down to Pamplona for the fiesta.

Location precision: Hemingway doesn't name the stretch of river; the pin marks the Irati south-east of Burguete, within a day's walk.

"At noon of Sunday, the 6th of July, the fiesta exploded." For seven days there is dancing in the streets, bulls running through town every morning and bullfights every afternoon. Brett falls for the young matador Pedro Romero; Cohn, jealous, beats Romero up in his hotel room, and Romero answers by fighting his best bulls in the ring the next day. The bullring the characters walk past was new then — it opened in 1922 — and the morning bull run still ends inside it.

Location precision: The fiesta fills the whole old town; the pin marks the bullring at the end of the bull run.

Visitor guidance: The bull run (encierro) is at 8:00 each morning from 7 to 14 July; the bullring is open for tours outside the fiesta.

After the fiesta Jake goes off alone to San Sebastián to recover. He swims out across the bay to a raft, lies on the hot boards in the sun and dives into the green water — the quietest pages in the book. Then a telegram, forwarded from Paris: "COULD YOU COME HOTEL MONTANA MADRID AM RATHER IN TROUBLE BRETT." He books a berth on the Sud Express that night.

Visitor guidance: La Concha is the city beach; swimming rafts are still anchored in the bay in summer.

In Madrid, Brett has sent Romero away and wants to go back to Mike. Jake takes her to lunch upstairs at Botín's — "one of the best restaurants in the world" — and eats roast suckling pig with three bottles of rioja alta while she barely touches her plate. Then a taxi down the Gran Vía, Brett leaning against him: "we could have had such a damned good time together." Jake's answer closes the book: "Isn't it pretty to think so?"

Location precision: Most readers identify Botín's with Sobrino de Botín (pinned); one historian argues Hemingway meant another Botín on nearby Plaza de Herradores.

Visitor guidance: Sobrino de Botín, founded in 1725, is listed by Guinness as the world's oldest restaurant and still serves roast suckling pig; booking ahead is wise.