Hotel Sidi Driss: Visiting the Star Wars Hotel in Matmata
What was filmed at Hotel Sidi Driss, what you can actually see today, whether to visit for lunch or stay the night, and how Matmata's troglodyte houses work.
One pit dug into the ground in Matmata is a working hotel, a working restaurant, and the interior of Luke Skywalker’s childhood home. All three are true at once, and knowing which is which is most of what makes a visit worthwhile.
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What was filmed at Hotel Sidi Driss
Hotel Sidi Driss is the interior of the Lars homestead — the underground courtyard where young Luke eats breakfast with his aunt and uncle in A New Hope (1977). The exterior dome that supposedly sits above it is a separate structure entirely, 300km west on the edge of Chott el Jerid near Nefta; the two were never in the same place, which is normal for film sets and catches most first-time visitors off guard.
The original 1977 set dressing was struck after filming and the pit went back to being an ordinary part of the hotel. It was rebuilt from scratch in 2000 for Attack of the Clones, which is why what you see today — the alcoves, the low tables, the muted desert-tone paint — reads as the film so precisely: it is the newer dressing, not a 45-year-old original.
What you can see today
The Star Wars pit is now the hotel’s restaurant, not a roped-off museum room. You sit at the same tables in the same alcoves the crew dressed, order lunch or mint tea, and the room does the rest of the work — there is no separate ticket or entry fee to see it beyond being a paying customer of the hotel.
Most day tours give this stop 30 to 60 minutes, which is enough time to eat, photograph the room from a few angles, and look around the rest of the property, but not enough to linger. Several operators combine it with tea in a genuinely lived-in underground home elsewhere in Matmata, where a local family serves bread, honey and olive oil — that visit is separate from Sidi Driss and typically runs on tips rather than a fixed price.
What to check: whether your tour’s Matmata stop includes lunch at Sidi Driss specifically or only a brief photo stop, since not every itinerary that “visits Matmata” actually eats in the Star Wars room.
Whether to visit or stay overnight
A day-trip stop suits almost everyone. You get the room, the photographs and usually lunch, and you move on to Ksar Ghilane or the rest of a Sahara route the same day. This is how nearly every visitor experiences Sidi Driss, and it is enough for the film connection alone.
Staying overnight is a different, quieter experience. The hotel has five pits in total — four hold guest rooms, and the fifth is the Star Wars restaurant — so an overnight guest sleeps in a genuine troglodyte room a few steps from the film set rather than just passing through it. The advantage is timing: day-trip groups arrive and leave within a narrow midday window, so a guest staying the night has the courtyard to themselves in the early morning and evening, after the coaches have gone.
Overnight makes sense if Star Wars is a genuine priority for your trip, if you want to experience troglodyte architecture properly rather than as a lunch stop, or if you are self-driving and Matmata fits naturally as a base for the night before pushing on to Ksar Ghilane or Tataouine.
What to check: book directly with the hotel for an overnight stay rather than through a day-tour operator, since day tours are built around a lunch stop, not a room.
How Matmata’s underground architecture works
A troglodyte house here is not a cave carved into a cliff face. A pit several metres deep is dug straight down into the soft sandstone, and rooms are then tunnelled horizontally outward from its walls — bedrooms, a kitchen, storage — arranged around the pit’s open floor, which functions as the courtyard. The technique keeps the rooms cool in summer and insulated in winter, which is exactly why it suited a desert climate for centuries before it suited a film crew: the same thermal mass that makes a troglodyte home comfortable to live in is what made the Lars homestead courtyard read as a shaded, lived-in space on screen. Several hundred of these homes in and around Matmata are still lived in today, which is part of why the town reads as a real place rather than a preserved set, even with a film location inside it.
How to combine Sidi Driss with a Sahara route
Matmata sits on the natural road between the coast and the deep south, so Sidi Driss rarely needs a dedicated trip of its own. From Djerba or Zarzis, it slots into the same day as Ksar Ghilane — the Sahara, Ksar Ghilane, Matmata & Star Wars Set tour does exactly that, rated 4.7 from 114 reviews. From the northern coast, Matmata is a standard first-day stop on every two-day Sahara tour before the road continues to a desert camp. If Star Wars locations specifically are the priority, our Star Wars filming locations guide sets out how Sidi Driss fits with the rest of the set — Mos Espa, Ksar Hadada and the Chott el Jerid dome — across a longer route.
Other Star Wars locations to add
Sidi Driss is one stop in a wider set that Tunisia never fully struck. If it fits your itinerary, the Tataouine ksour — including Ksar Hadada, which played the Mos Espa slave quarters — are on the same eastern side of the country and reachable on the same kind of day trip from Djerba. The western cluster around Tozeur — Mos Espa itself at Ong Jmal, and the Lars homestead exterior dome — is 250km away and belongs to a separate Tozeur-based day or the second day of a longer loop; no single day tour reasonably covers both clusters. The full filming locations guide breaks down which tour reaches which set.
Frequently asked questions
Can you actually stay overnight at the Star Wars hotel?
Yes. Hotel Sidi Driss has five pits — four hold guest rooms and the fifth is the restaurant built from the film set. Book directly with the hotel rather than through a day-tour operator if an overnight stay is what you want.
Is the film set the original from A New Hope?
No. The 1977 dressing was removed after filming; what stands today was rebuilt in 2000 for Attack of the Clones. It looks accurate to the film because it is a faithful, more recent recreation, not a decades-old survivor.
How long do tours actually spend at Sidi Driss?
Usually 30 to 60 minutes, generally over lunch. That is enough to see the room, eat and photograph it, but it is a stop within a longer itinerary rather than the focus of the day for most visitors.
Is Hotel Sidi Driss the same place as the Lars homestead exterior?
No, and this trips up a lot of first-time visitors. Sidi Driss is the interior only. The white exterior dome is a separate structure roughly 300km west, on the edge of Chott el Jerid near Nefta.
Do I need to book Matmata separately from a Sahara tour?
Not usually. Almost every tour heading from Djerba, Zarzis or the northern coast toward Ksar Ghilane or the deeper desert already routes through Matmata and stops at Sidi Driss as part of the itinerary.
Ready to book? Compare Matmata Star Wars tours with live prices, or see the full filming locations guide for every set Tunisia still has standing.
See the Sahara From Your Hotel Door
Hotel pickup, a 4x4 across the Dahar plateau, the hot spring at Ksar Ghilane, and lunch — rated 4.8/5 by 1,671 guests. Free cancellation up to 24 hours before.
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