Chott el Gharsa

Where it sits. Chott el Gharsa is the smaller, higher-drama neighbour of Chott el Djerid, a salt pan northwest of Tozeur whose floor drops to roughly seventeen metres below sea level. A low gravel ridge separates it from the main Djerid basin, and its southern margin runs out into a plain of hardpan and drifting sand that ends against the sandstone hills near the Algerian frontier. The most recognisable feature on that margin is Ong Jemel, an outcrop weathered into a shape locals read as a kneeling camel's neck, about 25 kilometres northwest of Nefta. Everything of interest here sits on the belt between the pan and the hills, where the ground is firm enough to drive on and the dunes are actively moving.

Why film crews came here. The combination is unusual: a dead-flat white basin, dunes of clean sand within a few kilometres, sandstone scarps for depth, and a paved road and airport at Tozeur within an hour. Crews have used the Ong Jemel plain since the 1970s. The desert sequences of The English Patient were shot on and around these dunes in 1995, with the production based in Tozeur and Nefta. But the reason people arrive today is the set that has never been taken down.

Mos Espa. In 1997 the production of Star Wars: Episode I built a full spaceport town on the plain below Ong Jemel to stand in for Mos Espa, where Qui-Gon Jinn finds Anakin Skywalker. About twenty structures went up: domed houses, cylindrical towers, arched market frontages, and the facade of the junk shop. They are plaster and fibreglass shells on timber and steel frames, built to be photographed from specific angles and never intended to be permanent. A violent sandstorm struck the Tunisian units early in the shoot and wrecked part of the standing set; the crew rebuilt overnight, and some of the damaged pieces were repurposed on camera as podrace wreckage. The set was used again in 2000 for the second prequel.

What has happened to it since. Mos Espa survives, which makes it the largest surviving Star Wars set anywhere, but it survives as a maintained ruin rather than as a preserved film location. The plaster is crumbling and has been patched repeatedly with cement and fresh render, some domes have lost their tops, and the paint has been redone by local hands in colours that do not always match the originals. A more serious threat is geological. A large crescent dune has been advancing on the site from the northwest for decades; measurements using the set buildings as fixed reference points put its migration at roughly fifteen metres a year, and by the early 2010s it had reached the outermost structures. Sand was cleared mechanically, and clearing has had to be repeated. The dune has not stopped, and parts of the set have been buried, dug out and buried again.

What a visit is actually like. There is no ticket office in any formal sense. Local men collect a small fee at the edge of the site, quad bikes and camels wait for hire, and vendors sell trinkets in the shade of the facades. Walking the "streets" takes twenty minutes. From the right angle the illusion holds completely; step around the back and the buildings are hollow shells with scaffolding, chicken wire and sand drifts inside. The Ong Jemel outcrop is a short drive further, as is the flat where the crescent dunes begin, and the light in the last hour of the day, when the pan turns pink and the shells throw long shadows, is the reason to plan the trip around the afternoon rather than the morning.

The wider pan. North and west of the set the true chott takes over: a crust of salt over saturated silt, dangerous to drive on and effectively impassable after rain. Small oases and springs mark the northern shore, and the escarpment behind them carries the mountain oases of Tamerza, Midès and Chebika, where a canyon cut into the limestone still runs with water. The road linking those villages to Tozeur is one of the finest drives in Tunisia, with the pan visible below for much of it.

Getting there and timing. Nefta is the closest base, Tozeur the practical one. Access is by unsurfaced track and requires four-wheel drive; half-day trips combining the set, Ong Jemel and the dunes are sold from every hotel in Tozeur and typically run in the late afternoon. October to April is the sensible season. There is no water, shade or shelter on the plain, phone coverage is patchy, and the sand-laden wind that blows through in spring can shut the site down for days at a time.