The troglodyte dwellings are located in the south of Tunisia, in the village of Matmata. In 1970, the government began to give troglodytes an allowance, so now it is the most ordinary Tunisian village with small houses of villagers. Matmata was originally the name of one of the Berber tribes that inhabited the 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 metres. Some of them can be descended only by rope or rope ladder.
As a rule, a "house" consists of several floors - two and sometimes three. On the ground floor are the living rooms, on the second floor small pots intended for utility rooms. Since the houses are dug at a fairly great depth (9-12 metres), the temperature variations typical of the desert are not felt in them, and they are always cool in the forty-degree heat. The earth pit itself, which was dug initially, is called haush. Afterwards, the rest of the rooms (bedrooms, pantries, kitchens, small additional rooms (perhaps for guests), and sometimes even stalls for cattle) were dug from it into the depths of a small mountain or hill. To bring animals to the surface, there were hidden passages that went a little further away 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 the hard rock it was necessary to spend a lot of time and effort. There are 700 such caves on the territory of the village of Matmata. There are now hotels and small restaurants for tourists in several of them.
