Ruins of Tatooine – Finding and Saving the Star Wars Lars Homestead

I still remember the first time I watched Star Wars, and while there are so many scenes that I’ve found definitive over the course of my life, one of the most poignant is the last view of the double suns of Tatooine setting over the smoldering ashes of the Lars homestead. At that moment, we were all Luke Skywalker- nothing holding us back and a desire for revenge and adventure burning the sadness from our veins. But what ever happened to that ill-fated group of desert homes after Star Wars wrapped up filming and moved on to galaxies far, far away?

The Star Wars Lars Homestead – Galactic Ruins of Future Past

When the production left the Tatooine set, deep in the Tunesian desert, the Lars homestead continued on much as it would have if it had been the real scene of a senseless massacre. No one bothered to tear the set down. It wouldn’t be worth the pain and the effort; better to walk away and start fresh elsewhere. It quietly waited in the sand, with the memories of the people who lived there slowly eroded and softened by wind-driven grains. For years, the architecture degraded in the face of the elements, and the homestead sat, completely forgotten as if it had never been. Then, photographer Ra Di Martino happened to spot the smudged outlines while looking for interesting geographical features on Google Earth.

Finding her way out to the Lars Homestead was an adventure in itself. While she had determined the rough coordinates from the satellite views on Google Earth, when she actually got to the country, it took some intrepid questioning to find anyone who found her descriptions of the site familiar. Eventually, lead out into the desert by someone who vaguely recognized what they were looking for, she found the Lars homestead, and shot these amazing images of the vestiges left.

star wars lars homestead ruins
star wars lars homestead ruins mos espa house
star wars lars homestead ruins luke's house
star wars lars homestead ruins skywalker
star wars lars homestead ruins no more stars
star wars lars homestead ruins mos espa
star wars lars homestead ruins beggar
star wars lars homestead ruins beggar
star wars lars homestead ruins future home

Though it’s sad to see something that played a prominent role in cherished memories reclaimed by the desert, I almost wish that I would have someday had the chance to see the Lars homestead in this state. There’s something fitting about having the site become a lost ghost in the desert, versus a well trod attraction. Tatooine represents the stifling sameness that everyone struggles to buck while growing up and finding themselves- the harsh land, the ‘boring neighborhood,’ the overwhelming desire to get up and find a more exciting life somewhere else in the stars. In these pictures, in this last stage of its life, the Lars homestead has mystery and depth that it never could have possessed in the eyes of a teenager who just wanted to do something more than bullseye womp rats. However, when the photos spread, movie lovers and Star Wars geeks around the world decided this was not the fate that the Lars homestead should suffer.

Dedicated fans raised money and sent engineers out into the desert to save the Lars homestead, and they managed to get it looking as good as new. Now, they occasionally send someone out to check on the “igloo” and report back on how it’s holding up- which, as it turns out, is fairly well. If you want to learn more about the project, you can read all about it here at the Save Lars Homestead website.  There are a ton more excellent photographs at this site:

star wars lars homestead ruins rebuilt
star wars lars homestead ruins rebuilding
star wars lars homestead ruins
star wars lars homestead ruins mos eisley

What do you think should happen with old movie sets? It’s not like very many movies these days build props to scale with the likes of Star Wars- green screen and animation technology is rendering it expensive and pointless. Should we be cherishing and preserving old sets, or letting them fade with time?

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Gina

Author, Designer, and "that girl your mother warned you about." Looking good seems to be my job, whether it's working with the site design, or a number of other more interesting capacities. I have a ridiculous sense of humour and a brutal sense of honesty- you'll see a lot of that coming through in my writing, so don't say I didn't warn you if I somehow manage to offend you AND hurt your feelings at the same time. On the plus side, it makes my dating and advice columns a lot more pertinent to an unfinished man in the real world.

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