Every Star Wars Filming Location in Tunisia

Hotel Sidi Driss, Matmata — the Lars homestead interior

Matmata’s houses are dug down into the ground as open pits with rooms tunnelled off the sides. Hotel Sidi Driss is one of these, converted into a hotel, and its sunken courtyard played the interior of the Lars homestead in A New Hope in 1977 and again in Attack of the Clones in 2002. Set dressing from the second shoot is still on the walls, and the space now works as the hotel’s dining room.

The visit is short and indoors, and it carries an entry fee that some Djerba tours include and others do not. Reached from Djerba, Zarzis and on the multi-day runs from Tunis.

Ksar Hadada and Ksar Ouled Soltane — the slave quarters

Both are ksour: fortified Berber granaries, honeycombs of vaulted storage cells stacked three and four storeys around a courtyard, built long before anyone filmed there. Both stood in for the Mos Espa slave quarters where young Anakin lived in The Phantom Menace, and neither needed much dressing.

Ksar Ouled Soltane, south-east of Tataouine, is the more photogenic of the two — the courtyard is close to intact. Ksar Hadada, to the north, reads more like a village and has been partly converted. Shared day trips from Djerba almost always include one or the other, rarely both. Which one you get is worth checking before you book.

Chott el Djerid — the homestead exterior

The largest salt lake in North Africa, and the surface on which the exterior dome of the Lars homestead sits. In summer it is a blinding white crust you can drive across; after winter rain it holds shallow water and mirrors the sky. Tours crossing between Tozeur and the east pass over it, and the two-day runs from Tunis include a photo stop.

Sidi Bouhlel — the canyon

A narrow gorge north-east of Tozeur, known locally as Star Wars Canyon, used in A New Hope for the sequence where the Jawas capture R2-D2 and for the Tusken Raider ambush. It later served other productions, including Raiders of the Lost Ark. It is less visited than the sets, partly because there is nothing built there to photograph — the location is the landscape itself. A few Tozeur itineraries include it; most do not.

Ajim, Djerba — Mos Eisley

The port town on the south-west corner of Djerba, where exteriors for Mos Eisley were shot, including the building used as Obi-Wan Kenobi’s home. There is no set and no signage; the buildings are ordinary working ones, which is the point. A small number of Djerba tours make this their focus rather than driving south.

Tataouine — the name, not a location

The town lent its name to the planet and is on most southern itineraries for its market rather than any film credit. Worth an hour, and it is the gateway to the ksour.

Chenini — not a filming location at all

Included on nearly every Tataouine day trip, and frequently mistaken for a set. It is an inhabited Berber village built into a cliff face, reached on foot up uneven stone, with a guide from the village walking you through the granary, the oil mill and the mosque. It gets the warmest mentions in the reviews of any stop on the eastern circuit, and it earns them.

What you can realistically see, and in how long

One day from Djerba gets you either Matmata and Sidi Driss, or the Tataouine ksour and Chenini — not both, unless you take the private eleven-hour run that manages it. One day from Tozeur gets you Mos Espa, Ong Jmal and the mountain oases. Two days across both bases covers almost the whole list. Two days from Tunis covers Sidi Driss, the Chott and Mos Espa but skips the ksour entirely.

Sidi Bouhlel and Ajim are the two that almost never appear on a standard itinerary. If either matters to you, look for a private tour and name the site when you book.