At first glance, they will look like two plastic bubbles, or, as seen from the sea, the eyes of some prehistoric monster.

That is how Hagar Qim and Mnajdra should look like in a year or two after the proposed shelters are erected.

The public, that is the rather small number of people who attended a Heritage Malta talk last week, saw the proposed shelters and gasped. Opinions were varied. One foreigner expressed what many were feeling: that the canopy is visually upsetting: it will change all our perception of the temples.

But then he ruined the impact of his point by suggesting that since the temples had once been roofed over, that is how they should be preserved, integrated into a fully holistic building.

That caused a mild outburst. Reuben Grima, Senior Curator of the World Heritage Sites Unit at Heritage Malta that manages the Maltese prehistoric sites, who was delivering the talk, patiently explained again that while he agreed the proposed shelter was a visual intrusion, (he had earlier called them “ghastly”) it would be far worse to try and enclose the temples because the hypothesis that the temples had been topped by an earth ceiling is still unproved. Even to return the whole structures under the soil, as they had been for centuries before the excavations that brought them to light in 1839, would be problematic. The shelter concept just aims to stop the damage being caused to the temples and buying time. A more appropriate way to preserve the temples may be found in the future.

The only other alternative to covering the temples is to let them deteriorate and disintegrate.

Ever since 1839, when the temples were dug out from the earth in which they had been buried for the past thousands of years, they have been completely exposed to the elements of wind and rain. These have eaten away at the stones and increasingly caused structural problems and the risk of collapse.

Ever since the decision was taken seven years ago to do something about the temples, a very expensive monitoring programme, costing 160,000 euros, all paid by the EU, has been put in place. The monitoring includes measuring minutely the temperatures and the humidity, water flows and wind directions and impact. It was discovered that the temples’ stone goes through a 30º variation from the cold nights to the warmer midday in winter, let alone an even more extreme temperature variation in summer. It is this variation in temperature that is destroying Hagar Qim and Mnajdra.

When the project team were deciding what would be the best shelter for the temples, they looked out for the bad examples they were determined not to follow. They did not have to look far: the glass house shelter at Piazza Armerina in Sicily not only looks like a glass house but generates even more heat which is now damaging the priceless historic mosaics.

The original design of the shelter looked like a tent, much like those used on camping holidays that are supported by a single arch. Then the planners came up with a double arch concept. Finally, they focused on a bubble, which would be of lower height. Contrary to one’s first impression, it is not translucent: on the contrary, only 10 per cent of light would be allowed to filter in. The choice of material was very important: there was a PVC material available and a more sophisticated (and costly) variation, which was chosen. Such a concept has already been used at Ephesus by the same engineer who is now involved in this project in Malta.

This final concept has the advantage that it only touches the ground on the perimeter and the pins that hold it to the ground will make the least damage to the site. Care is also being taken to ensure no archaeological remains will be damaged by the holes that will be dug for the pins. More important, the tents will be structured in such a way so as not to impede in any way the temples’ world-famous orientation in line with the sun’s position at the equinoxes. One big advantage of this tent-shelter is that it is fully reversible. And it will be fully monitored once in place.



The visitors’ centre

The original plan, now reconsidered and replanned, was for a very large heritage park to surround the temples, including a car park in the nearby quarry, which had been “saved” from the “mad idea” of using it as a landfill.

The new plan now is for both the car park and the visitors’ centre to be at the far end of the site, near today’s car park and using more or less the same area.

The car park will not be enlarged, as one of main objectives for the creation of the visitors’ centre is to control the flow of visitors, which at present is unregulated; masses of coaches arrive at the same time and there are too many people, and there are times when the temples are empty.

The visitors’ centre will not be so visible either as the nearby restaurant will still be the highest building.

On one side of the centre there will be “decent” bathrooms on the ground floor and a cafeteria on the upper floor.

Visitors will be able to access the interpretation centre via a bridge. First they will find themselves in an audiovisual area and from here into a series of rooms that will take the visitor on a voyage of discovery. The rooms will not explain the temples in a chronological order, but in a thematic series: landscape (the area context), ecology, architecture, the islanders’ world (with tactile explanations of globigerina limestone), conservation, astronomy (with interactive exhibits). There is a special area reserved for children but the whole exhibition will encourage one and all, not just children, to touch things, to try their hands at things.

Eventually, the team also plans to create an open-air theatre in the terraced quarry with views of Filfla. Another dream is to create a pedestrian trail linking the various sites in Malta and even in Gozo.



Sitting out the trappers’ issue

Dr Grima was characteristically frank even on the vexed hunters and trappers issue, an issue that is causing intense debate in some quarters at present and which may lead to important changes in the coming days.

For a long time, Dr Grima said, Hagar Qim and Mnajdra have been the focus of this issue and they are seen by hunters and trappers as “the enemy”. “We do not want Hagar Qim or Mnajdra to be involved in this debate,” Dr Grima said. “We intend to sit out on this.”

He added: “If trapping is prohibited, it will be a loss of our cultural heritage. They were there before the area became a cultural site. We also want to illustrate this activity too, just as we try to illustrate the activity of the people who built the temples.

“Besides, most of the hides are very acceptable. We do not want to obliterate all and everything. We want to explain and give details of this human activity as well.”