Filming locations in Seville

Seville hands set-jetters two very different eras of screen history in one walkable old town. The headline is the Real Alcázar, the Moorish royal palace whose tiled courtyards and sunken gardens became the Water Gardens of Dorne, seat of House Martell, in Game of Thrones. Book a timed ticket well ahead, as it sells out daily, especially in spring, and go first thing to walk the gardens before the heat and the crowds arrive.

A short stroll away, the city's other great set predates Westeros by half a century. Seville's grand semicircular Plaza de España, with its arcades, painted tile alcoves and little canal, stood in for British military headquarters in Cairo in Lawrence of Arabia. It is a free, open public square in the leafy María Luisa Park, vast and walkable at any hour, and you can row a little boat in its moat for a few euros.

The pleasure of Seville is that the screen locations are folded into a city made for wandering. The cathedral and its Giralda tower stand right beside the Alcázar, the tangled, shaded lanes of the Santa Cruz quarter begin just outside the palace walls, and María Luisa Park is all fountains and orange trees. None of it asks for a car; the whole old town rewards a slow couple of days on foot.

Andalusian heat shapes the timing here. Spring and autumn are the sweet spots, with the orange blossom scenting the courtyards in spring, while high summer sends everyone indoors by midday. Mornings are quietest for photographs at both the Alcázar gardens and the Plaza de España, and an evening passeggiata through Santa Cruz, tapas stop to tapas stop, is the right way to end a screen-hunting day.