On Location: Valencia's City of Arts and Sciences on ANDOR: A STAR WARS STORY Season 2

Geek Girl Authority

3 days ago

Welcome to On Location , a weekly feature spotlighting landmarks and establishments seen on screen that viewers can visit IRL. Whether you're seeking a fun selfie, breathtaking vistas, or maybe a show-accurate treat, follow along for some bucket list destinations.
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If you believed (as I did) that all Star Wars films and series are mostly filmed in a galaxy far, far away, or on a Hollywood backlot, you'd be forgiven. After all, the franchise's world-building grounds itself in spectacularly alien-looking landscapes and skylines. And Lucasfilm's ILM literally has the word 'magic' in its name. However, in the case of Andor: A Star Wars Story 's vast and impressive Coruscant Senate complex, they found that the superlative architecture of Valencia's City of Arts and Science in Spain (known to locals as Ciutat de les Arts i les Ciències ) was too perfect to pass up. Image Credit: Courtesy of Lucasfilm via starwars.com The City of Arts and Sciences on Andor: A Star Wars Story
Although the dome-shaped Senate Building had to be digitally inserted with the rest of the cityscape, the distinctive promenade Mon Mothma (Genevieve O'Reilly), her colleagues, and other Coruscant residents stroll along is, in reality, the South Cantilever of the Museu de les Ciències Príncipe Felipe, or Museum of the Sciences.
The Cantilever terrace runs along the third floor of the Science Museum, 17 meters or over 55 feet in the air. At 220 meters long (approximately 720 feet), it provides a dramatic panoramic lookout for visitors, connecting the City of Arts and Sciences' four main buildings – the Agora covered plaza, the Museum of the Sciences, the Hemisfèric , and the Palau de les Arts Reina Sofía opera house.
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The City of Arts and Sciences' Museu de les Ciències opened in 2000. Architect Santiago Calatrava designed the south façade's repetitive white concrete buttresses to resemble a dinosaur's skeleton. Built with 58,000 cubic meters (over 2 million cubic feet) of concrete and 14 tons of steel, the building houses 42,000 square meters (over 450,000 square feet) over three floors, the largest surface area of any building in Spain.
Various exhibitions take up 26,000 square meters (nearly 280,000 square feet) of the space. The museum's main objective is to engage visitors with interactive science exhibits. For example, the 'Chromosome Forest' on the third floor allows guests to explore and learn about the human genome using large-scale models of the 23 pairs of chromosomes. Image Credit: Disney+ The Eye of Knowledge
In Andor: A Star Wars Story Season 2, the Senate Building replaces the Agora structure at one end of the promenade, but the City of Arts and Sciences's centerpiece, the Hemisfèric, remains visible at the other end. It was the first building completed in 1998. Also designed by Calatrava, it contains: an exhibition hall; a projection hall, which includes an IMAX Cinema, a planetarium, and a laserium; and the Carl Sagan Perimeter Ring event space.
The building's design resembles a human eye. Its nickname is 'The Eye of Knowledge.' The ovoidal roof is over 100 meters (approximately 330 feet) long. A shutter system consisting of elongated aluminum awnings forms the 'eyelid,' which opens to reveal the 'iris' of the building, the projection hall.
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The third of the ticketed venues in the City of Arts and Sciences is the Oceanogràfic , an open-air oceanographic park. It is the largest aquarium in Europe. Designed by architect Félix Candela, the complex resembles a water lily with eight petals. Each petal is a building identified with one of the following aquatic environments: Mediterranean, Wetlands, Temperate and Tropical Seas, Oceans, Antarctic, Arctic, Islands and Red Sea, in addition to the Dolphinarium.
Buying a combined ticket (starting at €49.80/approx 60USD) for the three sites is the most economical way to visit. Open from 10 am to 9 pm, it's an amazing way to spend a day AND recreate some key Coruscant moments.
Water, Water, Everywhere
All the water features seen around the Senate District in Andor: A Star Wars Story are real. Each building is surrounded by enormous reflecting pools of water. In total, they cover over 13,500 square meters (just under 150,000 square feet). As the land was once part of the Turia riverbed, it seems rather fitting.
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One last seen-on- Andor filming location is located at the City of Arts and Sciences is the Umbracle. Another Calatrava design, it is a 320-meter (1000-foot) long landscaped walk enveloped by an open structure 60 meters (147 feet) wide. Free to access, the garden contains many shrubs and plant species indigenous to Valencia. These include several varieties of palms and orange trees. Inside, you'll find The Walk of Sculptures and an art gallery. Functional as well as beautiful, its ground floor is the City of Arts and Sciences' main parkade.
Both seasons of Andor: A Star Wars Story are streaming on Disney+.
10 STAR WARS Characters Who Need a Novel of Their Own Diana lives in Vancouver, BC, Canada, where she invests her time and energy in teaching, writing, parenting, and indulging her love of all Trek and a myriad of other fandoms. She is a lifelong fan of smart sci-fi and fantasy media, an upstanding citizen of the United Federation of Planets, and a supporter of AFC Richmond 'til she dies. Her guilty pleasures include female-led procedurals, old-school sitcoms, and Bluey. She teaches, knits, and dreams big. You can also find her writing at The Televixen, Women at Warp, TV Fanatic, and TV Goodness.