Description of the attraction
Dwellings of troglodytes are located in the south of Tunisia, in the village of Matmata. In 1970, the government began to allocate allowances to troglodytes, so now it is the most ordinary Tunisian village with small villagers' houses. Originally "matmata" was the name of one of the Berber tribes that inhabited this area. Later, the name of this village also became the name of the people who built their houses in the form of deepened earthen caves with a diameter of 8 to 13 meters. Some of them can only be climbed by rope or rope ladder.
As a rule, the "house" consists of several floors - two, and sometimes three. On the first floor there are living rooms, on the second there are small closets intended for utility rooms. Since the houses are dug at a fairly large depth (9-12 meters), the temperature drops characteristic of the desert are not felt in them, it is always cool in them in the forty-degree heat. The very earthen hole, which was dug initially, is called khaush. After that, the rest of the rooms (bedrooms, storerooms, kitchens, small additional rooms (possibly for guests), and sometimes even stalls for livestock) were pulled out from it into the depths of a small mountain or hill. To bring the animals to the surface, there were hidden passages that went out a little further from the main entrance.
Each new house was built not by one family, but by the whole village, because to dig such a large hole in hard rock it was necessary to spend a lot of time and effort. There are 700 such caves in the village of Matmata. Now in several of them hotels and small restaurants for tourists are open.
