Steaming Seville, the Andalusian capital, Spain’s fourth largest metropolis and the country’s second most attractive city – Granada topped it, narrowly, in a recent poll by online travel site Telling History – looks like the setting of a film. Because it is.

Most recently, Seville’s Royal Alcázar, a 14th-century Christian palace constructed over an even older Islamic castle, served as the Water Gardens of the House of Martell in Game of Thrones. The same citadel served as Sir Ridley Scott’s Jerusalem Palace in 2005’s Kingdom of Heaven, a film that elsewhere made use of another of Seville’s spectacular palaces, the 16th-century Casa de Pilatos. When George Lucas was looking for an otherworldly setting for the phantasmagorical Theed city in 2002’s Star Wars: Attack of the Clones, he settled on Seville’s Plaza de España, a vast semi-circular arcade of arches and alcoves built in 1928 for the Ibero-American Exhibition of 1929. Seville has been acting as a film set as far back as 1962’s Lawrence of Arabia.

It’s a scorching backlot that data suggests is only getting hotter. Last year, the city, which lays at the bottom of a valley 80 kilometres away from the cooling effect of the ocean, became the first in the world to start naming extreme heatwaves, in the same way that the rest of the planet names hurricanes.

The first, Zoe, arrived in July 2022, with temperatures peaking at 43°C. The second, Yago, landed in June 2023, nudging the mercury to 43.9°C. That was a regional record. The hottest part of the day is between 5pm to 7pm. The summer months have become so hot that even the locals leave. They make for Cadiz, down on the coast. We visited Seville in the last week of February. It was averaging 21°C even then. Seville is great for winter sun. It’s far closer than the Maldives.

Less than a 10-minute walk from the city’s twisting UNESCO-protected Old Town – one of the largest in Europe – is a cobbled street called Corral del Rey. Behind a heavy-studded Moorish door is the low-key reception of a splendid little hotel of the same name. A former ‘casa palacio’, or palace home, the thick-set 17th-century building has been tastefully transformed into a soothing 17-bedroom bolthole that boasts many of its original features, including marble columns, Mudéjar-style doors and ancient timber beams. Anything that isn’t exceptionally old has been discerningly handpicked by Kuky Mora-Figueroa to complement everything that is.

Mora-Figueroa, a free-spirited descendant of one of Andalucía’s most well-heeled families, travelled around India and Asia before returning to Spain to marry Englishman Tim Reid, a hotelier who’d worked for Mandarin Oriental and the Shangri-La Group. In 1992, the couple opened Hacienda de San Rafael, an 18th-century olive-mill-turned-guesthouse on an idyllic patch of countryside 45 minutes outside of Seville.

Just as she’d done at Hacienda, when the couple opened Corral del Rey in 2007, Mora-Figueroa occupied the hotel with curios from her extensive travels. Rugs from Morocco, antiques from Asia, restored fabrics from France. On the walls, and for sale, are pieces by Henry John and Enrique Vara – indicative, perhaps, of the hotel’s Anglo-Spanish heritage.
From the main building Corral del Rey expanded into another former noble house across the street, as well as into an adjacent annex. In total, however, there remain only 17 rooms. Each is a quirky mix of natural textures – stone, wood, marble – individual furniture and high-tech mod cons. Our room had a rainfall shower in the bathroom and a standalone bath not too close to the end of the bed.

The hotel is now in the hands of Kuky and Tim’s sons; Anthony, who gained his hospitality experience while working for a members’ club in Mayfair, and Patrick, previously of luxury tour operator Abercrombie & Kent. The pair preside over a small place with a big personality. A low-key, high-minded hideaway from the breath-taking furnace outside.

From £260 per night, visit corraldelrey.com

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