Anyone who visits Malta will quickly find out, if they didn’t already know, that there is a ton of really cool prehistoric stuff to see on the islands.  I personally didn’t know much about it, and am not super into prehistory, but visiting some of the sites around Malta really enlightened me about this virtually unknown period of time over 5000 years ago.  This article is going to discuss two sites which are within walking distance of one another, and are very close to the capital city of Valletta.  There are a ton of sites all over Malta and Gozo, and honestly it is hard to pick just one, and impossible to skip over entirely.  The Hypogeum and the Tarxien Temples are both UNESCO world heritage sites. 

As I was researching some of the activities for this trip, I had heard that you need to get tickets for the Hypogeum months in advance.  This is a very popular attraction, and they only let in 10 people at the top of every hour.  This is because the Hypogeum’s microclimate, which is underground, is significantly affected just by the carbon dioxide that we expel when we breathe.  The climate is super monitored and regulated.  Honestly you can’t fit too many more people down there anyway, so the 10 person limit is probably right on, even from just a space perspective, let alone the microclimate.  The next available tickets for the Hypogeum when we were there at the end of August were a month away.  I purchased my tickets about 2 months in advance.  They are also the most expensive tickets that you are going to buy to see just about anything in Malta.  They were 35 Euro for adults, 20 for students and 15 for children, but children under 6 years old are not admitted. 

I thought it was a bit overpriced, but the set up was pretty cool. They have a nice gift shop and you start by watching a movie providing you with some of the history about the place.  You get an audioguide that is pretty much a mid-2000’s brick phone which tells you about each spot that you stop at inside the Hypogeum.  There is also a human guide who shows you where to go. One of the cool parts to me was how it was discovered by a person who was building homes on the site as they were digging to create cisterns for water.  They actually did build the homes on top of these caves, which is bizarre.  You can still see some of the tiles from the homes on the site.  Eventually, the homes were demolished and they excavated the Hypogeum. 

So, what is a Hypogeum?  It is an underground necropolis which was used by prehistoric people for rituals, it is thought, primarily regarding the dead.  They were basically mass graves.  In fact, any question you might have about the place is explained by the fact that there were massive piles of bones everywhere.  Why is this little window or passageway 3 feet off the ground? Oh, it’s because the bones were piled up so high that the “floor” was raised up that high.  OK, there were ZERO actual bones in there, but you can really imagine what it must have looked like.  Sorry for the lack of photos, cameras and phones are not allowed inside. There is a lot of really good info on the Heritage Malta website as well as photos and videos.

There was the somewhat creepy “oralcle” room which still had ochre paintings on the walls in spirals everywhere.  There was the “holy of holies” room where they speculate that important rituals were performed.  You stop at about 10 different places along the way as you go deeper into the crypt.  It is a bit creepy, but not nearly as claustrophobic as I expected it to be.  It was really amazing to catch a little glimpse into the lives of prehistoric peoples and their rituals.  I felt very far removed from that prehistory, but it was spectacular to see what they were able to build with absolutely zero technology.  This was literally the stone age.  

The Tarxien Temples were about a 10 minute walk from the Hypogeum.  They hail from around the same time as the Hypogeum during what is called the temple period in prehistory.  The Temples are outdoors and above ground, but covered with an extraordinarily large canvas covering in order to preserve the site.  The shade was welcome in the 90 degree Maltese heat!  Much of the coolest stuff that was discovered at this site is no longer at the site, but housed in the Archaeology Museum in Valletta, which is well worth a visit to check out the cool prehistoric artifacts that were discovered around the islands.  

For me, it was hard to imagine what the temples might have looked like in prehistoric times based on our walk-through.  The walls are mostly destroyed and are pretty low so you can see over the tops of them.  It was neat to see how these prehistoric people put the megaliths together, though.  I mean, these are massive slabs that you have to wonder how they were moved and placed together with, again, zero technology.  There is a replica of one of the “fat lady” statues that were found there, but not a whole lot else to see.  I would say that if you are visiting the Hypogeum, you should take the walk over to the Tarxien Temples to check it out for about 40 minutes, but they are not the most impressive temples on Malta.  Stay tuned for my article on Gozo to find out more about the impressive Ggantija Megalithic Site!

All in all, this was a fun city break to check out some really really old prehistory.  It’s hard to fathom history over 5000 years ago, but visiting the Hypogeum and the Tarxien Temples will put you well on your way.