‘Look. See how it’s flaking,’ says Dr Reuben Grima, pointing to a piece of golden-retriever-coloured rock set on a parched hillside on the Maltese coast. He sighs and looks down at a collection of small rock slivers gathered around the rock’s base. ‘These bits probably fell off in the past few days.’

This wouldn’t matter if it were just any old piece of rock, but we’re examining part of the Hagar Qim temple, one of the oldest buildings on the planet and part of a series of impressively complex temples (seven have World Heritage status) built by settlers on the small Mediterranean islands of Malta and Gozo up to 6,000 years ago.

The temples’ architectural significance is huge. ‘The statement that they’re the oldest buildings in the world has to be carefully qualified,’ says Grima, senior curator of Malta’s outdoor prehistoric sites. ‘But these are the earliest stone monumental buildings of such complexity presently known.’

Indeed, the temple’s builders employed some very sophisticated engineering, including lumps of rock cut to size to create multi-chambered buildings with roofs. ‘They make the Egyptian pyramids look like a pile of stones,’ says Professor Alex Torpiano, a structural engineer helping to protect the temples. ‘It’s difficult to imagine how they did it without computers or maths.’

Nobody is entirely sure what the buildings were used for (‘These societies didn’t have such a sharp divide between religious and secular,’ says Grima, ‘so they probably served religious, economic and political needs’), but clues in the building suggest that animal sacrifices and complex worshipping rituals might have taken place inside.

‘The interior was designed to impress,’ Grima continues. Visitors would have been confronted by an array of decorated stones or ‘theatrical sets’, thronged with whirling seas and galloping animals. ‘Nowadays, we’re supersaturated with images, so it takes a lot to impress us,’ but this ‘kaleidoscope of images’, together with the smell of burning herbs, and the changes in atmosphere on entering the temple would have created an ‘extremely effective’ multi-sensory experience, Grima believes.

Exposed to the elements

The ‘geological realities’ of the islands made these stone slideshows possible. ‘There are two types of rock here,’ Grima explains, ‘the hard stuff: coralline limestone; and the soft stuff: globigerina limestone.’ Both were created millions of years ago at the bottom of the sea: the former from dead coralline algae, and the latter from the remains of a type of plankton known as foraminifera. ‘The harder rock enabled people to make tools to manipulate the softer stuff.’

The ancient islanders typically used the harder limestone for the temples’ outer shells and the softer rock for the decorated interiors. Now that the temples have lost their roofs, the delicate globigerina inside has been exposed to the elements.

The combination of sun, wind and rain is now causing the stones to crumble at an alarming rate. ‘The rate of loss is comparable to a mud-brick structure,’ says Grima. And according to stone conservation scientist Professor JoAnn Cassar, ‘the surfaces go first because they’re at the stone–environment interface. So we’re most likely to lose the most important material.’

And it isn’t just the individual rocks that are suffering: the entire temple structures are at risk because the rain washes out the dirt ‘cement’ that holds the stones in place. Grima believes that the temples could topple ‘within decades’ and, after a series of dramatic collapses during the 1990s, the temples were pronounced unstable by structural engineers in 2000.

At this point, Heritage Malta, which is responsible for looking after the islands’ temples, decided that a drastic solution was needed: a temple shelter. ‘It’s a life-support system,’ says Grima, who is overseeing the installation of temple shelters and increased visitor facilities at three threatened Maltese temples: Hagar Qim, nearby Mnajdra and Tarxien.

The first two shelters – consisting of stadium-type polymer membranes stretched over two arches and secured to the ground using steel piles – and a low-carbon visitor centre at the site entrance will be in place by early this year, while the shelter for the Tarxien site should be finished by 2012. They are all designed to be almost completely reversible. ‘The shelter itself has a lifespan of 25 years,’ says Grima. ‘In that time, we will look into ways to stabilise the sites so they no longer need a shelter. It’s simply a way of buying time.’


Memorable experience
But the Maltese public and media aren’t convinced they’re necessary. ‘We’ve had some lacerating pieces in the press,’ says Grima. ‘People say, “There’s no shelter over Stonehenge, so why do we need one?”’ What they don’t understand, he says, is how much has already been lost at Stonehenge, which has ‘been exposed for much longer, whereas, this site [Hagar Qim] has eroded dramatically since it was exposed [for excavation] in 1839’.

And the modern visitor centre has also come in for some flak. People don’t like the way that it stands out. ‘It’s supposed to read as a modern building,’ Grima responds. ‘[It’s] an insertion: not part of the historical landscape.’ He would have liked the building to have been less visible, but was reluctant to cut into the rock and permanently damage the landscape.

He’s hoping that it will come to be valued in time. Inside will be exhibitions on the temples, conservation issues and the landscape, as well as a depository for pagan offerings left on the site and, importantly, toilet facilities. ‘You can’t have a site like this without proper bathrooms,’ Grima says, pointing to the (rather grim) portaloos currently used by the site’s 120,000 annual visitors.

‘If it helps people make sense of Hagar Qim and gives them a more memorable experience, it will be a success,’ says Grima. ‘If it just takes a few more cents from tourists as they flow through, it will have failed.’ His experiences at the site of the Hypogeum, an ancient burial temple, which was redesigned by Heritage Malta during the 1990s to limit visitor numbers and protect the ancient wall carvings, keep him optimistic.

‘Tour groups of hundreds of people used to go through there, brushing up against the walls and eroding the patterns,’ says veteran tour guide Maria Buckle. The experience was so rushed that many people didn’t have a clue what they were seeing, she says. ‘One woman came out and asked if it was a Second World War shelter,’ says Grima, who believes the Hagar Qim and Mnajdra temples can have as little impact because people aren’t helped to understand the buildings’ importance.

Now, the Hypogeum is highly regarded. ‘It’s top of many visitors’ lists,’ says Buckle. And the restoration experience has taught Grima ‘not to cut your wrists at the first criticisms. We learned that there’s a cycle of nay-saying that peaks as a project becomes more visible when it’s near completion.’ The criticism of the Hypogeum redevelopment eventually petered out, with local people eventually ‘embracing the project as the benefits started to become clear’.

Sick baby
While Grima works to convince the public of the merits of the shelters, he’s also working with Cassar and a small team to try to find a more permanent solution for the sites. One of the major factors causing erosion is salt, which is absorbed by the porous globigerina and then breaks open the rock when it crystallises inside. ‘As we’re an island, it’s everywhere,’ says Cassar. ‘The rain is salty, the ground is salty, the wind is salty.

‘One thing we’re looking at is inhibitors that would cause the salt to crystallise outside the rock,’ she continues. ‘We’ve done a small bit of lab work on them and it seems to be promising.’ But it’s far too early to apply them directly to the stones, and she’s not sure if it will ever be possible. ‘Before you put any product on, you have to ask yourself ethical questions. Anything you apply to the stones is completely irreversible.’

In the meantime, her team is constantly monitoring the sites to find out exactly how the elements and the shelter affect the temple. ‘It’s like a sick baby,’ says Cassar. ‘You don’t just throw a blanket over it and walk away. You continue to monitor it.’

The ultimate aim, Grima says, is to protect the stones for posterity. ‘I’m ultimately more interested in the judgements of future generations,’ he says. ‘We can protect this postcard view of the ruins and pass them on to our children in a much reduced state or we can protect them with a shelter and say, “Here you go, this is the state we received them in.”

‘It’s about what we choose to value,’ he continues. ‘We’ve romanticised these ruins and we like to see them. So do I, but not at the cost of losing their fabric. That’s the core reason they were inscribed by UNESCO. It’s the buildings themselves that are of global significance, not their location in the landscape.

‘When it’s pouring with rain in the middle of the night, I can’t sleep. That’s when it’s dangerous [for the temples]. I’m just waiting for the phone call to tell me there’s been another collapse. Then I don’t have any doubts about these shelters. I know we’re doing the right thing.’

February 2009