CREDITS STAR WARS EPISODE II: ATTACK OF THE CLONES, 2002 dir: George Lucas Hayden Christensen Natalie Portman Ewan McGregor Samuel L Jackson Ian McDiarmid Christopher Lee Jimmy Smits Ahmed Best Hugh Quarshie Pernilla August Anthony Daniels Kenny Baker Oliver Ford Davies

Yes, of course we were all disappointed that there's so little of the delightful Jar Jar Binks but, apart from that, Clones is a vast improvement over The Phantom Menace. George Lucas began a retreat into the Fox Studios in Sydney, Australia, where much of the film was shot against green screen.

The production does boast a couple of the series' most seductive locations, though.

But first the team returned to some familiar locations: once again 'Tatooine' is represented by the desert landscapes and native architecture of Tunisia, where the original Star Wars (now Episode IV: A New Hope) and Episode I: The Phantom Menace. It's a return to the Sidi Driss Hotel, Matmata for the interior of the 'Tatooine' homestead. The exterior was a set built on the Chott el Jerid near Nefta.

And the Palazzo Reale in Caserta, near Naples, again becomes the interior of ‘‘Theed Palace’ on ‘Naboo’ (see The Phantom Menace for details).

This time around, though, the exterior (which was entirely computer-generated in Episode I) is the PalaÁio EspaÒol, a semi-circular arcaded building in the Plaza de EspaÒa, Seville, built for the 1929 Spanish-American exhibition. The PalaÁio EspaÒol is largely empty and, when I visited, a bit dilapidated, though there was evidence of restoration work.

In the Plaza itself you'll find the canal, crossed by elegant 'Venetian' bridges over which Anakin (Hayden Christensen) and Padme (Natalie Portman) walk.

You may remember the pillared colonnade as the ëCairoí hotel, where TE Lawrence (Peter O'Toole) ruffles the feathers of the British officers by demanding lemonade for his Arab companion, in David Leanís Lawrence of Arabia.

As the 70s generation of ëmovie bratsí, including George Lucas and Steven Spielberg, are such fans of David Lean, it's difficult to dismiss this as mere coincidence (Spielberg, similarly, revisits a David Lean location in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade).

Anakin and Padme walk in the palace grounds: Plaza de Espana, Seville

The stunning lake retreat is on Lake Como in northern Italy near the Swiss border. The summer palace is Villa del Balbionello, near the village of Lenno, about 15 miles north of Como on the lakeís western shore. The villa, with its unique loggia commanding views north and south, stands on the tip of a steep, wooded promontory.

The Lake Country retreat: Villa del Balbianello, Lake Como

It is open to the public (gardens admission §5) Tuesdays and Thursdays to Saturdays. The villa itself can be toured by prior arrangement, tel: 034456110). You reach the villa by boat from Lenno or nearby Sala Comacina. On Tuesdays, Saturdays and Sundays itís possible to walk from Lenno. Itís about 15 minutes, and quite steep, from the southern end of the bay or from the wooded path leading up from Via Degli Artigiani, at the southern end of Lenno.

The villa crops up again in the new version of Casino Royale, as the sanatorium at which James Bond recuperates after his torture by Le Chiffre.

The Lake Country retreat: Villa del Balbianello, Lake Como