It is incomprehensible that some people live underground in an unfriendly region like an iguana awakened from sleep. Only the presence of olives trees somehow cheers the landscape. That’s what Matmata would mean, where Troglodyte Berber houses are a miracle of life on earth.
If you’re a fan of the Star Wars series, you remember where Luke Skywalker’s house was (the young one): Hotel Sidi Driss in Matmata, chosen for its unique underground construction. This hotel (which continues to operate) is the (luxury, so to speak) representative of the Berber houses underground in Matmata, a small village in southern Tunisia, whose inhabitants live their days in the “troglodyte” structures underground, in a setting that I would call moon-like rather than terrestrial.
We are talking about some nomadic tribes who decided to settle here (some say 700 years ago, but nobody knew about them until 1967), choosing to arrange their houses in a particular way: digging a vast circular pit (with depths of 5-10 meters) in the rocky plateau, made of tiles soft enough to be modeled with hand tools. Then, inside, other large cavities were dug, which were to turn into underground rooms, the middle of the pit functioning as an inner courtyard.
