The best Star Wars filming locations you can actually visit

The set-jetting industry was practically created by Star Wars, sending fans in 1977 flocking to visit a galaxy far, far away for real – in Tunisia’s western deserts, where George Lucas created his planet, Tatooine. Excursions from the city of Tozeur will wheel you off to the Jebel Sidi Bouhlel mountains (‘Star Wars Canyon’), the still-standing sets from The Phantom Menace (1999) or – a little further east – the troglodyte Hotel Sidi Driss, which doubled as Luke’s home in A New Hope (1977).

But while new series The Acolyte (out in June) was mainly filmed at Reading’s Shinfield Studios, the franchise has spent much of the past 45 years visiting locations across the planet, many of them bucket-list fixtures for travellers, such as northern Guatemala’s Tikal National Park. Hidden amid the howler-monkey-strewn rainforests are the temples of the once-lost city of Tikal, mysteriously abandoned around AD900, which was – fittingly – the secret rebel base in A New Hope; you can join a tour at the nearest hub, Flores (65km from the site). The climactic battle of The Last Jedi (2017) was partially filmed on Bolivia’s epic Salar de Uyuni salt flats (visit in the December-April rainy season to hopefully catch that remarkable mirror effect).

Irish Star Wars fans got a surprise when the distinctive features of island Skellig Michael, off the coast of County Kerry, turned up at the end of The Force Awakens (2015), setting it up as a location for The Last Jedi. During the summer, you can book a tour and – if you’ve the Jedi conditioning for it – hike 618 steps up to the monastery and stone huts.

The Phantom Menace, receiving a 25th anniversary re-release in May, stopped off in southern Italy, making use of the 18th-century Royal Palace of Caserta, which became Queen Amidala’s royal abode. It’s 30km from Naples. The Empire Strikes Back (1980) took a detour to southern Norway to the Hardangerjøkulen Glacier to film the ice planet Hoth scenes, where the production was infamously waylaid by the worst snowstorm in 50 years. Join a glacier tour between July and September.

The temperatures will certainly be higher in the southern Maldives, where Laamu Atoll stood in for the Imperial Planet Scarif in Rogue One (2016). But whether it’s from the friendly locals or the spinner dolphins in the Atoll’s tropical waters, you’ll likely receive a much warmer welcome than our heroes do.

Star Wars: The Acolyte is available to stream now on Disney+