Las Salesas, Pamplona

Between Calle San Francisco and Rincón de la Aduana, in the heart of Pamplona's Old Town, stands a building that spent much of the 20th century turned inwards, away from the world. This is the former convent of Las Salesas, a complex occupying a generous plot by the standards of the old town's tightly packed streets, and one that deserves a pause on any stroll through this part of the city.

Its official name was the Monastery of the Visitation of Our Lady, and its story begins in 1902, when it was built to a design by Florencio Ansoleaga. From then on it was home to the community of Salesian nuns, who gave the building the name by which the people of Pamplona still know it.

The turn of the century also brought a change of direction. In 2000 the nuns left the convent and the building was left awaiting a new purpose. In 2004 it was acquired by the Caja de Ahorros de Navarra savings bank, and in 2010 it passed to the Mancomunidad de la Comarca de Pamplona (the Pamplona district authority), which undertook the work needed to adapt it to a role very different from its original one.

The result was unveiled in 2023, when the old monastery became the Mancomunidad's headquarters. A building conceived for retreat and enclosure has thus opened up to the life of the city without vanishing from the urban landscape, an example of how heritage can be preserved by giving it a new use.

For visitors, Las Salesas is a good excuse to stop in a corner of the Old Town somewhat off the beaten track and observe how Pamplona's early 20th-century convent heritage sits alongside the contemporary city.