Matmata (Star Wars filming location)
마트마타 (스타워즈 촬영지)
In Matmata, a desert village in southern Tunisia, Berber families dig their homes into the ground: a deep round pit becomes the courtyard, and rooms are carved like caves into its walls. Underground, the rooms stay cool in the scorching daytime heat and warm on cold desert nights. One of these pit houses, the Hotel Sidi Driss, was filmed as the courtyard of Luke Skywalker's home on the planet Tatooine in Star Wars (1977), and fans still come to spend the night there.
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Quick answers
Where is Matmata (Star Wars filming location)?
Matmata (Star Wars filming location) is in Tunisia.
Matmata is a small town in southern Tunisia where many Berber families have lived in underground 'troglodyte' (cave-dwelling) homes. To build one, people dig a big round pit in the ground, then dig rooms into the walls around it. Some homes join several pits with trench-like passages. In 2004 the town had about 2,100 people.
The underground houses stay cooler than buildings above ground in the desert heat. Today Matmata is a popular place to visit, and many families earn money from tourism. It is also famous from film: one underground hotel was used as Luke Skywalker's home on the planet Tatooine in the original Star Wars.
How the pit homes work
A pit home is built around a central open courtyard dug straight down into the soil. The rooms are tunnels cut sideways from the courtyard walls, and a passage leads out to the surface. Several pits can be linked by passages. Matmata has some of the best examples of this style of building in the world, and some local people still live in them.
A flood and a film
Heavy rain fell for 22 days in 1969 and flooded many homes, and many collapsed. A group had to ask the authorities for help, and a new above-ground village was built. Most families stayed in rebuilt underground houses, though a few moved. The Hotel Sidi Idriss was a filming location for Star Wars (filmed in 1976) and appeared again in Attack of the Clones in 2002.
Fun facts
- The Hotel Sidi Driss pit house was used again for Star Wars: Attack of the Clones (2002), a quarter of a century after the first film.
- A single heavy rainy spell in 1969 lasted 22 days and wrecked many underground homes.
- The Hotel Sidi Idriss appeared in two Star Wars films, 25 years apart.
- Some homes are made of several pits connected by trench-like passages.
On the globe
Look for southern Tunisia, in North Africa, to find the town of Matmata and its pit houses.
Nearby on the globe
Sources
Updated: 2026-10-14