CREDITS LAWRENCE OF ARABIA, 1962 dir: David Lean Peter O'Toole Omar Sharif Alec Guinness Anthony Quinn Anthony Quayle

 

“It was my privilege to know him and to make him known to the world. He was a poet, a scholar and a mighty warrior. He was also the most shameless exhibitionist since Barnum & Bailey.”

David Leanís last really great movie, before his taste for the overblown ballooned into pomposity.

The opening scene, of Lawrenceís (Peter O'Toole) fatal motorbike ride, which in reality took place in Dorset) is Chobham, Surrey.

Lawrenceís memorial service did actually use the steps in front of St Paulís Cathedral in London, but the interior was recreated in a Spanish studio.

In fact, all the interiors, and much of the rest of the film, was shot in Spain.

The town ofí ‘Aqaba’ was built at a beach called Playa del Algorocibo near Carboneros, close to Almeria in southern Spain. The attack on the train filmed at Genovese Beach, San Jose on Cabo del Gato (Cape of the Cat) nearby.

For many of the ‘Middle Eastern’ settings, Lean used the heavily Moorish city of Seville, particularly the vast complex of buildings in the Parque de Maria Luisa, Avenida de Isabel la Catolica, built for the disastrous 1929 Spanish-American exhibition.

Here you can find the ‘Cairo’ officers' club, where Lawrenceís companion is refused a drink after the desert crossing, which is the, currently empty and rather dilapidated, Palaçio Español, a semi-circular arcaded building in the Plaza de España (seen more recently as the exterior of ‘Naboo's Theed palace’ in Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones).

Lawrence of Arabia location: the council chamber: El Casino, Sevilla

‘Jerusalemís civic buildings’ are the Plaza of the Americas just to the south (seen in John Milius’s epic The Wind and the Lion, with Candice Bergen and Sean Connery), while ‘Damascus’ town hall, the Arab council chamber, is the nearby circular El Casino, Avenida de Maria Luisa.

Lawrence of Arabia location: Courtyard of the officers' club: Seville's luxurious Alfonso XIII Hotel

Also in Seville is the courtyard of the Officers’ Club, which is the central court of the luxurious Alfonso XIII Hotel, 2 San Fernando 41004 (tel: 5422.2850).

Lawrence of Arabia location: Lawrence meets Colonel Allenby: Casa de Pilatos, Plaza de Pilatos, Seville

Lawrence and Allenby meet in another Seville landmark, the Casa de Pilatos, Plaza de Pilatos (tel: +34.95.4225055; admission charge), built in 1519, and supposedly a copy of Pontius Pilate’s – surprisingly 16th century – Jerusalem house.

But of course, the real visual splendour of Lawrence lies in its breathtaking Jordanian desertscapes. Lawrenceís first introduction to the desert is the black basalt landscape of Jebel Tubayq, near Jordan's Saudi Arabian border, as is much of the trekking and the caravan across the Nefud. Feisalís camp, and the well where Lawrence first gets his Arab drag, are the spectacular red cliffs of Wadi Rumm, twenty miles north of the Gulf of Aqaba.

Lawrence of Arabia location: The ‘Arabian’ desert: the cliffs of Wadi Rumm, Jordan Photograph: Dallas Denton-Cox

Omar Sharifís spectacular camel ride entrance (of course, Sharif wasnít actually in this, his most famous scene) used the mudflats at Jafr in Jordan, as did the rescue of the lost Arab boy, Gasim.

More scenes were filmed in Morocco, at Ait Benhaddou, a spectacular village made up of several small kasbahs (fortresses), about fifteen miles northwest of Ouarzazate. Its red towers have been seen in Gladiator], The Last Days of Sodom and Gomorrah and The Jewel of the Nile. Just outside Ouarzazate, the giant Glaoui Kasbah was converted into a hotel, now the Kasbah Tifoultoutte, specially to house the cast. Itís about three miles from Ourzazate on the P31 (tel: 04.88.46.36).

Extra desert shots were filmed in the United States, on the Imperial Sand Dunes, Highway 78, east of El Centro, southern California close to the Mexican border.