Plaza de España, Seville

Where it sits. The Plaza de España occupies the north-eastern corner of the Parque de María Luisa, about a kilometre south of Seville cathedral and a short walk from the Guadalquivir at the Prado de San Sebastián. It is a semicircle roughly 200 metres across, opening toward the park, with a canal curving in front of the building and a wide brick apron behind the fountain at the centre. The two towers at the ends of the arc rise about 74 metres and are visible from most of the eastern city. Because the whole composition faces broadly north-west into the park, the brick and tile catch strong colour in the last two hours of daylight, when the arcade behind the colonnade fills with reflected light.

The story behind it. The plaza was built as the centrepiece of the Ibero-American Exposition of 1929, a fair intended to reposition Seville after decades of economic decline and to court the former Spanish colonies. The architect was Aníbal González, a Sevillian who had made his name in the regionalist movement and who resigned from the project in 1926 before it was finished; Vicente Traver completed it. The style is deliberately impure: Renaissance massing, neo-Mudéjar brickwork, Baroque flourishes on the towers, and a great deal of ceramic. Rather than importing marble, González used the materials Seville actually makes — brick, wrought iron and glazed tile from the Triana workshops across the river. The building has served as government offices ever since; military and civil administration still occupy much of the arc.

The forty-eight benches. Set into the base of the colonnade is a run of tiled alcoves, one for each Spanish province, arranged alphabetically from Álava round to Zaragoza. Each has a painted tile panel showing a historical scene from that province, a map picked out in ceramic, and a bench with the provincial coat of arms. They are the most photographed detail in Seville after the cathedral's Giralda, and they are also a compact lesson in Spanish geography. Four bridges cross the canal, representing the medieval kingdoms of Castile, León, Aragón and Navarre, each faced in ceramic balustrades. Rowing boats can be hired on the canal, which was drained and rebuilt in the 2010s.

On screen. The plaza's combination of enormous scale, unfamiliar silhouette and total absence of visible modernity has made it a standing double for palaces that do not exist.

• Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones (2002) shot here for the exterior of the Theed Royal Palace on Naboo. The sequence in which Padmé Amidala and Anakin Skywalker arrive on Naboo and walk and talk beneath the colonnade was filmed on the plaza in September 2000; digital artists later added Theed's domes, spires and waterfalls behind the arcade and removed the modern city. The matching palace interiors were shot at the Royal Palace of Caserta in Italy, so a single scene change on Naboo crosses two countries.
• Lawrence of Arabia (1962) used the plaza as British Army headquarters in Cairo, the arcade standing in for a colonial office building; David Lean shot much of the film's "Egypt" and "Damascus" material in Seville, while the desert itself came from Wadi Rum in Jordan and the coastal town of Aqaba was built from scratch in Almería.
• The Dictator (2012) dressed the arc as the palace of the fictional republic of Wadiya.

What you actually see today. Entry to the plaza is free and it is open ground rather than a museum, so it works at any hour; the offices behind the colonnade are not visitable. The surface is largely flat brick and paving with ramps at the bridges, which makes it one of the more manageable major sights in the city for wheelchairs and pushchairs, though the tiled benches sit up a step. Buskers, flamenco guitarists and horse carriages work the arc through the afternoon. A short walk into the park reaches the Plaza de América, González's quieter counterpart, with its Mudéjar and Renaissance pavilions housing the city's archaeological and folk museums.

Getting there and timing. From the cathedral it is a 15-minute walk south along Avenida de la Constitución and Avenida de Portugal, or two stops on tram line T1 to Prado de San Sebastián; Metro line 1 stops at the same interchange. Early morning, before about nine, gives clear sightlines down the empty arcade; the hour before sunset gives the colour. Spring is the natural season, though the plaza sits close to the Feria de Abril grounds and the city fills for both the fair and Holy Week. Summer visits are best confined to the first hours of daylight.