Star Wars locations: in the footsteps of Skywalker and Solo

21.07.2023 - 07:56 / roughguides.com / Lake Como

The popularity of The Mandalorian series on Disney Plus is proof enough that the force is strong with this franchise. With plans for more than half a dozen spin-off series announced, it's time we revisit some of our favourite Star Wars film locations.

The good news is that if you want to follow in the footsteps of Luke Skywalker and Han Solo, you don’t need your own Millennium Falcon. Here, we’ve put together some earthly locations for you to visit following each film in the series. These are places where you can swing your lightsaber around, get out your action figures and fulfil your very own Star Wars fantasies. May the force be with you…

First of our close encounters with other worlds is Tunisia, where the desert doubles up as the barren planet Tatooine in the film. Onk Jemal is where a lightsaber duel between Jedi Master Qui-Gon Jinn and Sith apprentice Darth Maul, takes place. The best way to explore the dunes today (if you don’t have a landspeeder handy) is to whisk around on a quad or a 4x4.

© sculler/Shutterstock

Across to the other side of the Mediterranean for a touch of romance now, to the site of Anakin and Padme’s wedding scene in Attack of the Clones. The grand venue is the eighteenth-century Villa del Balbianello on the wooded western shores of Lake Como in the north of Italy, which spectacularly stands in for the Naboo lakeside.

This is surely the ultimate setting for similarly besotted Star Wars fans to get married. Eagle eyed film buffs might also recognise the villa from the Bond movie, Casino Royale. For those wanting to explore the Lake, a sailing boat allows you to explore the wild side of Lake Como.

When famously volatile Mount Etna on the Italian island of Sicily erupted during the filming of Revenge of the Sith it was too good an opportunity for the Star Wars producers to miss. A crew was dispatched to film the spectacular eruptions and lava flows. The footage captured was enhanced with CGI and all sorts of visual trickery to create the scorching backdrop of the planet Mustafar. This was the setting for the lightsaber showdown between Obi-Wan Kenobi and Anakin Skywalker. Today, you can hop on a 4x4 to explore the volcano, discovering a real lava cave.

© Salvatore Allegra/Shutterstock

We’re off in our X-Wing across the Atlantic to the dramatic environs of Death Valley in the USA. This famous corner of California stood in for a number of Tatooine scenes, with the sand-strewn wilderness of the Mesquite Flat Sand Dunes a real star.

A key scene here sees the our favourite droids fall out as R2D2 breaks away from C3P0 after their escape pod crashes. Take your own models here and you can film your own version with the identical desert backdrop. Embarrassingly poor droid impressions