Game of Thrones | Itálica Amphitheatre — The Dragonpit of King’s Landing

The elliptical bowl of stone opens under the Andalusian sky. Grass grows between the surviving tiers. The arena floor is empty now, but the scale is still unmistakable. This is the Roman amphitheatre of Itálica at Santiponce, nine kilometres northwest of Seville. In Season 7 it became the ruined Dragonpit of King’s Landing. Daenerys, Jon Snow, Cersei, Tyrion and the others gathered here to confront the threat from the North. The production used the real structure with only light dressing. The ancient seating and the open sky did most of the work. Built under Hadrian in the early second century, the amphitheatre once held twenty-five thousand people. Today the lower levels remain clear enough to walk. You stand on the same ground where the great houses of Westeros faced one another, and the weight of both histories settles at the same time.