Star Wars in Tunisia: Sidi Driss or Luke Skywalker’s home

This is the third of a four-part series on Star Wars in Tunisia. Please click here to read part one on Jedi cloaks and part two on Ben Kenobi’s home.

Just like the famous Hollywood sign in Los Angeles, the town of Matmata in southern Tunisia is marked with giant white letters on the side of a hillside. The surrounding countryside is barren and set with steppes.

But unlike Hollywood, which is home to a thriving entertainment industry, when you get to Matmata there is not a lot there. Just a couple of streets and a famous hotel that is a staple stop on the tour bus itinerary. (Quite a contrast to the remoteness and solitude we found at the abandoned mosque that served as the set for Ben Kenobi’s house).

Of course, Star Wars is the reason for all the tour buses. The Sidi Driss hotel in Matmata served as the interior of the Lars homestead on Tatooine – that is, Luke Skywalker’s home with his foster aunt and uncle at the very start of the original Star Wars movie and also in Attack of the Clones. According to Wookiepedia, the Star Wars Wiki the decorations went down after the filming of Star Wars: A New Hope in 1977, were recreated in 2000 for Attack of the Clones and have remained up ever since.

Hotel Sidi Driss was built centuries ago and was a traditional Berber home – it is a ‘troglodyte’ dwelling with cave rooms around a central courtyard. There are five pits and you can’t sleep there but one of the pits is a restaurant, decorated as the Lars dining room.

We didn’t eat there, but we did have fun exploring the hotel and of course, posing in our Jedi cloaks.

Related posts: Star Wars series

Also: Other posts on time travel. (The events of Star Wars happened ‘a long time ago’, don’t you know?).

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