Plaza de España

If this plaza looks like it was built for a movie set, that is because it essentially was — just not the movie you might think. Architect Anibal Gonzalez designed this enormous semicircular complex for the 1929 Ibero-American Exposition, a world's fair meant to rekindle ties between Spain and its former Latin American colonies. The result is a 50,000-square-metre explosion of Regionalism architecture that mixes Baroque Revival, Renaissance Revival, and Neo-Mudejar elements into something that has no real equivalent anywhere else in Europe.

The plaza's canal and four bridges represent the four ancient kingdoms of Spain: Castile, Leon, Aragon, and Navarre. Along the curved wall, 48 tiled alcoves depict historical scenes from each of Spain's provinces, arranged alphabetically from Alava to Zaragoza. Locals play a game of finding their home province and posing for photos in the corresponding alcove — it is a tradition that predates Instagram by decades.

In September 2000, George Lucas showed up with a film crew and spent 48 hours shooting what would become two minutes of footage in Star Wars: Episode II — Attack of the Clones. The plaza doubled as the city of Theed on the planet Naboo, where Anakin and Padme stroll before going into hiding. The location scouts chose it partly because the building's exaggerated grandeur already looked like science fiction.

After the Exposition ended, the building housed military offices for decades. Today it is home to government offices, but the real life of the plaza is on the canal, where visitors rent rowboats for a few euros and paddle under bridges that look like they belong in a fairy tale. Come early morning or at sunset to see the tilework catch the light.