18 Places to Experience Star Wars in Real Life

It’s not easy to get to a galaxy far, far away, much less a long time ago. But you don’t have to traverse time and space to experience the world of Star Wars.

The northern reaches of the Sahara desert lie in Tunisia, which served as the filming location for Luke and Anakin Skywalker’s home planet of Tatooine. The North African country even provided the fictional planet’s name, which came from the Tunisian city of Tataouine, which was a base for George Lucas and his crew during filming. Many of the sets from the original trilogy and the prequels remain in the area.

In the nearly 50 years since A New Hope premiered, the franchise has filmed everywhere from an erupting volcano in Italy to a sprawling salt flat in Bolivia. Other destinations have emerged too, including massive collections of memorabilia and an observatory painted to look like R2-D2. These are just a few of the amazing places where you can feel the force right here on Earth.