If the rocky walls and barren landscape of the Hôtel Sidi Driss ring a bell when you check in, consider yourself a worthy guest — this hotel is one of the most immediately recognizeable sets from the Star Wars movie and is absolutely wasted on people who haven’t seen it.
- Hotel Sidi Driss (photo Andy Carvin)
Well, OK, that’s not quite true, it’s pretty cool anyway. Rooms are nestled into manmade cliff faces in true Matmatan style — centuries ago, the people lived in “troglodyte” dwellings in the hillside.
It’s thought that the underground structures, some simple rooms and other comprised of entire houses, with rooms connected by passageways, were dug during Roman times, but they remained largely undiscovered until the 1960s.
Today, the settlement is virtually reliant on tourism for its income, welcoming both Star Wars fans and history fans to see the amazing way that the people lived. A stay in the Hotel Sidi Driss is both comfortable and incredibly interesting, and by all accounts the rooms are actually very comfortable — one visitor describes the rooms as ” surprisingly cheerful… with whitewashed walls and bright Berber weavings.”
Pieces from the original set, which transformed the hotel to the Lars Homestead, home to Luke Skywalker, his Aunt Beru Lars and Uncle Owen Lars, has now been incorporated into the hotel.
As well as being used in the Star Wars movies, Matmata is also set to star in the upcoming film “La Soif Noire”, an adaptation of the book from Swiss writer Hans Ruesch starring Antonio Banderas and Freida Pinto.
Rooms start at $10 USD nightly.
Address: Hotel Sidi Driss,6070 Matmata Ancienne, Tunisia
Perhaps unsurprisingly, there’s no website – the telephone number is (05) 230005
