Star Wars at the Alcázar: The Naboo Scenes Explained On Location

The Plaza de España in Seville was completed in 1928 for the Ibero-American Exposition. It is a semicircular building in Spanish Renaissance Revival style, 200 metres across, with a canal, bridges, and tiled alcoves representing each of Spain’s provinces. In 2002, George Lucas used it as the planet Naboo. The colonnaded gallery, the canal, the central steps — all appear in Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones as the Theed Royal Palace exteriors, the location where Anakin Skywalker and Padmé Amidala walk together in one of the film’s central sequences. The Real Alcázar, a kilometre away in the old town, was used in the same film for interior Naboo scenes. The Star Wars at the Alcázar filming locations are fewer and less frequently cited than the Plaza de España sequences, but the building that received the production team is the same one visitors stand in today — unchanged, more interesting than any film gave it credit for.

Star Wars and the Alcázar: What Was Actually Filmed Here

The Real Alcázar appears in Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones (2002) as interior spaces within the Naboo Royal Palace. The specific sections used were primarily the garden areas and lower courtyard sections — the production valued the Alcázar’s combination of formal garden structure, ornamental water features and Islamic-influenced architectural detail as visual grammar for Naboo’s aesthetic, which Lucas described as blending European palatial architecture with elements suggesting a more organic, nature-integrated culture.

The Plaza de España carries the majority of the Star Wars Seville association in visitor consciousness because the Naboo sequences filmed there are more extended and more recognisable. The Alcázar’s contribution is real but secondary to the Plaza de España in terms of screen time.

The Alcázar Locations Used for Naboo

The Alcázar Gardens

The gardens extending behind the Pedro I palace — covering approximately seven hectares — were the primary Alcázar filming location for the Naboo sequences. The formal garden structure, with its geometric parterres, clipped hedges, ornamental fountains and orange tree plantings, provided an exterior environment that read on screen as palatial without being recognisably European in a conventional sense.

The Galería de Grutescos — the elevated Renaissance walkway running along the south garden wall, decorated with grotesque stucco reliefs — appears in some of the Naboo exterior footage. The walkway dates to the early 17th century and was built to allow palace occupants to survey the gardens from above; its elevated position and decorative treatment made it compositionally useful to the production.

✦ LUCÍA’S INSIGHT
The Alcázar gardens contain several historical layers compressed into a single space: Islamic period garden design in the northern sections closest to the palace; Renaissance formal garden structure in the central areas; and 19th century additions further south. Walking through the gardens from north to south in chronological order is a different experience from the standard visitor route, and reveals how distinct each period’s approach to the space was.

The Plaza de España: The Primary Naboo Location

The Plaza de España is not technically part of the Alcázar, but the two sites are both associated with the Naboo sequences and visitors frequently mention them together. The Plaza de España — located in the María Luisa Park, approximately 1.5 kilometres southwest of the Alcázar — is freely accessible at all hours and requires no ticket. The semicircular main building, the central fountain, the four bridges over the canal, and the tiled alcoves are all on view. The specific colonnaded gallery sections used in Attack of the Clones are along the main ground-floor arcade.

The Plaza de España also appears in Game of Thrones (Seasons 5 and 6) as the fictional city of Braavos. This dual filming use is frequently cited; the building has become one of the most recognisable filming locations in Spanish popular culture despite having been built for a trade exposition in 1928.

✦ LUCÍA’S INSIGHT
The Plaza de España is busiest between 10am and 2pm when tour groups and independent visitors overlap. Early morning visits — before 9am — offer the space at its quietest, with the light hitting the ceramic tile alcoves from the east at an angle unavailable later in the day. The canal boat hire (usually from mid-morning) is worth the modest cost for the views back toward the main building from the water.

What the Filming Context Reveals About the Buildings

The Naboo aesthetic was intended to suggest a culture that had integrated natural and built environments over a long period, producing architecture simultaneously grand and organic. Seville’s Islamic-influenced palace architecture, with its courtyard gardens and water features, its geometric patterns derived from natural forms, fitted this intention better than purpose-built sets could have achieved.

The Alcázar’s gardens are themselves partly a 20th century reconstruction of what the original Islamic gardens might have looked like — a conservation decision, not a strict archaeological restoration. The pool in the Patio de las Doncellas, restored in 2004, had been covered for decades before the restoration returned it. The Star Wars production photographed a building that had itself recently been reimagined. What looked ancient on screen was, in parts, newly restored.

Visiting the Star Wars Filming Locations

The Alcázar sections — primarily the gardens and the Galería de Grutescos — are included in the standard admission ticket (€16.50 online). The gardens reward approximately forty minutes at a moderate pace, longer in spring when the orange trees are in blossom.

The Plaza de España requires no ticket and can be combined with the Alcázar in a single day. A logical sequence: Alcázar at opening (9:30am), gardens and palace over two hours, then walk or take a taxi to the Plaza de España before midday crowds peak.

Guided tours covering both Star Wars and Game of Thrones filming locations in Seville — with context about each building’s actual history alongside how it was used on screen — are available through GetYourGuide.
→ [GYG: See filming location tours in Seville here — Star Wars and Game of Thrones locations covered]

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Useful Resources

• Visit Sevilla — Official Tourism Site
• Alcázar of Seville — Wikipedia