The troglodytic houses of Matmata, together with the curious honeycomb-like granaries known as ghorfas, and the fortified settlements called ksour that proliferate in and around Tataouine, are so different to most known architectural styles that they look almost ‘alien’. This is perhaps why film director George Lucas was so taken with the area that he featured it in his Star Wars films as Luke Skywalker’s home planet.
Matmata: The curious Berber troglodytic houses of Matmata, or haouch hafera, were developed to combat the extremes of the southern Tunisian climate. The houses typically are sunk vertically into the ground to a depth of 7 or 8 metres and have courtyards opening onto the sky. Each home has a single sloping entrance which leads through a tunnel to a plastered courtyard which usually features two rooms cut into the rock. The origins of these houses is ancient and goes back to at least the 4th century BC.
Tataouine is a former base for the French Foreign Legion and makes an excellent centre from which to explore the dramatic gorfas and ksour built by the Berbers to defend themselves against the Arab invasion. The fortified village of Chenini has one of the most beautiful situations in Tunisia and is built on a cliff face with a very old and picturesque whitewashed mosque at its centre, while nearby Douiret has so many terraces of cave dwellings that the village has been compared to an ant-heap. To the north Medenine has some fine examples of the honeycomb-like ghorfas which have been fitted together into a defensive settlement, but arguably the finest examples of this style of architecture are to be found at Ksar Hededa – a site that was used by George Lucas in The Phantom Menace – and at the spectacular Ksar Ouled Soltane where the gorfas rise 5 tiers high.