It's
set in ‘a galaxy far, far away’, but that
doesn't mean you can't visit the locations for George
Lucas's groundbreaking fantasy.
For Luke Skywalker’s home, the desert planet of
‘Tatooine’, Lucas
chose the landscapes and native architecture of Tunisia
(Tataouine is a real Tunisian town, some miles south
of the movie location).
Luke’s sunken home was in the troglodyte town of Matmata, where
homes are burrowed into the soft local sandstone from
the sides of circular pits. The interior is one of the
inner courtyards of the Sidi
Driss Hotel (tel: 216.230.066), where
you can still see the murals and some of the set dressing
from the movie.
Disturbed by the tourist influx, or just tired of living
in the traditional pit homes, many of the residents
have moved to the recent development of Nouvelle Matmata
a few miles to the north.
Star Wars location: Set-dressing
for Luke Skywalker's homestead at the Sidi Driss Hotel,
Matmata, Tunisia
The exterior of the homestead, where Luke contemplates
the two suns, is part of the vast Chott
el Jerid, the dry, white salt flat stretching
across central Tunisia
to the oases of Tozeur
and Nefta. The site
of Luke’s home, now a couple of filled-in circular
pits, can be found a few miles south from Highway
3 on a turnoff just west of Nefta.
The same turnoff, followed six miles north, leads to
La Grande Dune,
used for the ‘Dune Sea’, where C3P0 and R2D2
wander aimlessly. Take care on Highway 3, which leads
into Algeria ‚ if you inadvertently cross the border,
you can end up in all kinds of trouble.
The gully, where R2D2 is captured by the Jawas, now
known locally as ‘Star Wars Canyon’ (you can
see it again in Raiders of
the Lost Ark), is Sidi
Bouhel, east of Tozeur on the edge of the
Chott el Jerid.
‘Mos Eisley’, the sleazy spaceport where Luke
and Obi-Wan meet Han Solo, is Ajim,
a sponge fishing town near the Ile
de Jerba. You can see the exterior of the
Cantina here.
A little to the north, overlooking the Gulf
of Gabes, is Obi-Wan’s remote home,
and a mosque used as the entrance to ‘Mos Eisley’.
Extra desert scenes, featuring R2D2, Luke’s landspeeder
and the banthas, were shot in Death
Valley, central California,
and cut in to match existing Tunisian footage. Underneath
the bantha costume is an elephant hired from Marine
World.
Star Wars location: The ëMassassi Outpost on the fourth
moon of Yaviní: Tikal, Guatemala
Photograph: Dallas Denton-Cox
The rebel base, ‘the Massassi Outpost on the fourth
moon of Yavin’, seen toward the end of the movie,
is the giant Mayan temple complex at Tikal,
Guatemala.
The spectacular ruins, 2,500 years old and set in the
222-square-mile rainforest of the Parque
Nacional Tikal, are in northern Guatemala,
about 40 miles from Flores (there’s a two-lane road, or you can travel by
air from nearby Santa Elena Airport) and can be visited
from the Tikal Visitor Centre.
