The Last Families Living in Tunisia's Underground Houses

Reuters photographer Zohra Bensemra recently spent time in southern Tunisia's Djebel Dahar region, where locals have lived in underground homes for centuries.  The cave houses, also known as troglodyte houses, offer protection against the extremes of summer and winter in the arid desert. A cluster of these crater-like homes can be seen in the village of Haddej on Google Maps. Most of theses cave homes can be found around Matmata, which gained fame as a filming location for Luke Skywalker’s home in the 1977 movie Star Wars. Reuters reports that fewer of these underground homes are now used, with some falling into disrepair: “In recent decades, rural depopulation has meant fewer people live in the homes, which are composed of rooms hewn into the walls of an excavated circular courtyard. The few remaining families say they are attached to the homes and the land or see no way of moving.”

Read more
Hints: View this page full screen. Skip to the next and previous photo by typing j/k or ←/→.

Most Recent

  • Brynn Anderson / AP
    • In Focus
    • September 21, 2021
    • 12 Photos

    A Sea of Flags: Commemorating More Than 675,000 Americans Lost to COVID-19

    Images of a temporary art installation made up of hundreds of thousands of small white flags representing Americans lost to COVID-19

  • Desiree Martin / AFP / Getty
    • In Focus
    • September 20, 2021
    • 22 Photos

    Photos: A Destructive Eruption on the Canary Islands

    More than 100 houses have been destroyed by a recent eruption on La Palma island.

  • Siphiwe Sibeko / Reuters
    • In Focus
    • September 17, 2021
    • 35 Photos

    Photos of the Week: Grenadier Guards, Floating Island, Wrapped Arch

    Flooding in southern France, cliff diving in Ireland, civilian astronauts’ launch from Florida, an elephant bath in Pakistan, scenes from the Met Gala in New York City, and much more

  • Hannibal Hanschke / Reuters
    • In Focus
    • September 15, 2021
    • 20 Photos

    Scenes From Greenland

    Snapshots from the largest island in the world

Most Popular on The Atlantic

  1. No, Vaccinated People Are Not ‘Just as Likely’ to Spread the Coronavirus as Unvaccinated People
  2. Trump’s Plans for a Coup Are Now Public
  3. Adam Kinzinger: Republicans Are ‘Frigging Crazy’
  4. The Most Important Vaccine I’ll Get This Fall
  5. American Gentry
  6. Your Professional Decline Is Coming (Much) Sooner Than You Think
  7. ‘I Was Responsible for Those People’
  8. ‘Post-Vax COVID’ Is a New Disease
  9. Doctors Might Have Been Focusing on the Wrong Asthma Triggers
  10. Six Rules That Will Define Our Second Pandemic Winter
Back to Top