Plaza de España

The scale is theatrical: a half-kilometre brick crescent curves around a plaza so wide that people, fountains and horse carriages all look small against it.

Along the base runs a ribbon of tiled alcoves, one for each Spanish province, and visitors hunt for their own region among the painted ceramic scenes.

A shallow canal loops in front of the building with little bridges over it; when boats are running, the reflection doubles the whole facade into the water.

Look up and the two towers at the ends of the crescent frame the whole composition, while the ceramic-tiled balustrades and lamp posts reward a slow walk along the full length of the arc.

The Plaza de España was built for the 1929 Ibero-American Exposition as a sweeping celebration of Spanish regional identity, its semi-circular brick and tile complex incorporating fifty provincial alcoves, each decorated with heraldic tiles and fountains representing a different province.

The building's central pavilion rises to 70 metres and is flanked by two 100-metre-long wings that curve gracefully back toward the square, their tiled alcoves containing maps of each province painted in traditional ceramic technique and fountains at regular intervals along the base.

Themoat surrounding the plaza was originally crossed by four ornate bridges representing the four ancient kingdoms of Spain — Castile, León, Navarre and Aragon — and the entire ensemble was lit by thousands of gas lamps that made the nighttime illumination as spectacular as the daytime spectacle.

It is the most photogenic single set-piece of Regionalist architecture in Spain, built to impress at world-fair scale, and it has since become a favourite backdrop for films.

The tilework is a craft display in its own right, mixing Baroque, Renaissance and Neo-Mudéjar motifs across the bridges, benches and provincial alcoves.

Unlike a museum it is a free, open public square you can simply walk into at any hour of the day or evening.