Roman Bridge of Córdoba

Where it sits. The bridge crosses the Guadalquivir at the southern edge of Córdoba's old city, linking the Puerta del Puente and the Mezquita quarter on the north bank with the Calahorra tower and the Campo de la Verdad on the south. It runs 247 metres on sixteen arches and is about nine metres wide, low enough that in summer the river below narrows to braided channels and gravel islands. Those islands are the Sotos de la Albolafia, a protected riverine woodland where herons, cormorants and night herons roost within a few metres of the parapet — one of the few places in Spain where a natural monument sits directly beneath a World Heritage monument.

The story behind it. A Roman bridge stood here from the early first century BC, probably replacing a timber crossing and almost certainly carrying the Via Augusta, the road that ran from Rome's Gaulish frontier to Cádiz. Very little of that structure survives above water: the Umayyad governor al-Samh ibn Malik rebuilt it in the eighth century on the Roman foundations, giving it sixteen arches instead of seventeen, and further reconstructions followed in the tenth century and repeatedly thereafter. Only the fourteenth and fifteenth arches, counted from the northern gate, are considered substantially original. The Calahorra tower at the southern end went up in the fourteenth century under Henry II of Castile as a fortified bridgehead; the Puerta del Puente opposite is a Renaissance triumphal gate of 1572 designed by Hernán Ruiz III, replacing the medieval gateway. A statue of the Archangel Raphael, the city's protector, was set midway along the parapet in 1651 by Bernabé Gómez del Río, and locals still leave candles at its foot. For two thousand years this was the only crossing; the San Rafael bridge downstream did not open until the mid-twentieth century.

What you actually see today. Since May 2004 the bridge has been closed to traffic, and a restoration completed on the first day of 2008 — a 13.6-million-euro project directed by the municipal architect Juan Cuenca Montilla — resurfaced the deck in smooth pale stone. The result is controversial locally, because the new paving reads as modern rather than antique, but it made the crossing genuinely level and step-free from end to end. Walking south you get the classic view back: the Mezquita's bell tower rising over the riverfront wall, the Albolafia waterwheel below the bank, and the row of medieval mills stranded in the current. The Albolafia itself has a story: the great wooden noria that lifted river water to the caliphal palace was ordered dismantled, tradition holds, because its groaning kept Isabella I awake in the Alcázar de los Reyes Cristianos alongside it; what turns today is a twentieth-century reconstruction. Further downstream the ruined Molino de Martos and Molino de San Antonio mark the line of medieval flour mills that once made this stretch of the Guadalquivir an industrial waterfront. The Calahorra houses the Museo Vivo de al-Ándalus, a somewhat dated but interesting museum of convivencia-era Córdoba, and its roof terrace gives the best elevated view of the bridge. The whole ensemble — bridge, gate and tower — has been protected as a national monument since 1931 and forms part of the historic centre inscribed by UNESCO in 1984.

On screen. The bridge stood in for the Long Bridge of Volantis in the fifth season of Game of Thrones, appearing in the third episode, first broadcast in April 2015, during Tyrion Lannister and Varys's journey east from Pentos. In the novels the Long Bridge is a covered street of shops, temples and brothels built across the Rhoyne; the production achieved that by flying a drone along the real deck to capture aerial plates, then building the ramshackle superstructure digitally on top of the Roman arches. Dressing crews added eastern-looking awnings and ornament for the exterior plates and removed them afterwards, while the dialogue scenes — the red priestess preaching to slaves, the walk toward the brothel — were shot on sets rather than on the river. The bridge on screen is therefore genuinely Córdoba's, scaled up several times over.

Getting there and timing. The bridge is a short walk from the Mezquita through the Puerta del Puente, and roughly twenty-five minutes on foot from Córdoba's AVE station, which puts the city under two hours from Madrid and forty-five minutes from Seville. There is no charge and no closing time. Photographers favour the southern bank at dawn, when the sun comes up behind the old city, and the first half hour of darkness, when the Mezquita's floodlights come on. Early May, during the patio festival and the Cruces de Mayo, is the most crowded and the most atmospheric time in the city; July and August are punishing, with Córdoba regularly the hottest city in Spain.