Much of the original set from George Lucas’ 1977 classic Star Wars is preserved in the Northern African desert of Tunisia where it was filmed. You can have a drink in the “Star Wars Bar,” stay in the cave hotel that served as Luke Skywalker’s home, and get your fill of Star Wars memorabilia. There are even friendly locals living in the set who are happy to share some bread and entertainment with tourists.

MATMATA, Tunisia — I have never been a “Star Wars” aficionado, to tell you the truth. The closest I ever came to appreciating the movie was singing along to the “Star Wars” ring tone on my colleague’s cell phone.

That is, until I took a trip to the planet Tatooine itself — a real place in the middle of the north African desert, a well-kept secret of Tunisia.

While ruthless Hollywood knocks over the set of each movie as soon as the director shouts his final “Cut!,” Tunisia, where George Lucas shot most of the “Star Wars” scenes, still keeps the original set from the ’70s, protecting it from the burning sun and the evil winds of the Sahara…

What seemed to be just another pile of desert rocks, gradually, as we approached, took the shape of the rockets, satellites and spheres of the 1976 “Star Wars'” production, the real-life science fiction amid the ancient desert.

Breathless and with my heart pounding, I wandered around the abandoned set, looking at the inscriptions “Mike and Lucy were here, 1987” or “Luke, I love you! Jessie, 2001.”

As I peered inside one of the impeccably built constructions, I noticed a mattress and a small teapot on the sand floor. In a mere moment, the “owner” of the house was there: an elder Arab man dressed in a typical desert fashion.

Surprisingly, his French was perfect and he explained to me that since he had neither family nor money, he came to live in the movie set. He looks after the place, the real roof of the fake house protects him from the sandstorms, and if a tourist throws him a small coin every once in a while, he can buy some more tea and some food. And he is hardly the only one living in the Lucas-built wonderland in the middle of the Sahara…

A three-hour drive from the futuristic desert sits the town of Matmata where we stayed the night at the troglodyte hotel. Troglodytes, are Tunisian cave people who live in houses dug vertically into the ground, a couple of stories deep, complete with doors and staircases, but no windows.

Normally, you would visit them in the daytime: the troglodytes (most of whom nowadays have motorcycles and cars parked in front of their cave entrances) will gladly show you their property, feed you home-made bread with olive oil and honey, play the tambourine for your entertainment and just ask for a few coins for all this fun and pleasure.

We were much luckier. Not only did we sleep and eat at the troglodyte place, we stayed at the troglodyte hotel, Sidi Driss, which was used as the actual house of Uncle Owen and Aunt B, the underground home of Luke Skywalker in the “Star Wars” movies.

It is said that Matmata is the only town on our planet where the hotel is the main attraction, and I totally believe it.

Sidi Driss used to be a real troglodyte house, and in the beginning of the ’70s it was transformed into the hotel. When Lucas came to Tunisia to shoot the original “Star Wars,” he came across the hotel and liked it so much, that not only did he sleep there; he also built additional “space” decorations inside the structure to shoot the necessary scenes. I received my first insight on the Sidi Driss’ role in movie location history from an extremely excited American “Star Wars” fan, who was having dinner at the next table in the hotel’s tiny canteen…

Having consumed both the food and the info, we left the “restaurant” and took numerous pictures near the real Skywalker memorabilia — the interior of the hotel. Then we went into the “Star Wars Bar” — a small pit in the hotel used to film the famous bar scene, and continued our investigation over the fancy-spacey-named cocktails.

The bar was basically a secret “Star Wars” fan-club, containing dozens of hand-written journals, countless newspaper clips, pictures and other pieces of documentation proving over and over again that yes, Luke and his entourage were here!

It sounds like the ultimate vacation for a Star Wars fan. All of the Star Wars films have scenes from the Tunisian sets and there are sure to be plenty of gems to find.

Other movies filmed in Tunisia include The English Patient, The Life of Brian, and Raiders of the Lost Ark.

Pictures from Travel-Blog, Movie-Locations, DudMC, Memories.Over-Blog, and TravelPod.com.