Hal Saflieni is an archaeological site of world significance whose “visit experience”, put in place as part of a major conservation project lasting some 10 years which ended in 2000, is worthy of it. If you are visiting Malta you should book ahead to ensure that you are one of those very few people allowed in each day!

The site consists of a series of underground burial chambers cut into the living rock through 3 levels to a depth of some 11m below street level in the suburb of Paola which is 20 minutes by bus from the Valletta terminal. You enter through what looks like just another terraced house in a side street to find that you are in a visitor centre built over the entire excavated site after 4 such houses had been demolished. The low key street frontage has been maintained, giving no impression of what lies within and below.

Each hourly tour allows a maximum of 10 visitors (and our experience was that even this is perhaps 2 too many!!). Look on the Heritage Malta Web site for up to date details and to book. Most of our group had booked as early as January for a tour in late April. A notice on the door indicated that the next 2 day’s tours were full – and, as I look again on May 2, the entire month is “full”! However, elsewhere there was reference to a procedure by which the first and last tours each day were for late booking either at the site or at the Valletta Archaeological Museum – but with no age/student etc discounts from the 25 Euro standard charge. Worth investigating if you haven’t pre-booked.

The tour lasts 1 hour and is operated via a multi language audio hand set for each visitor which automatically provides information relevant to each location, together with creative sound effects and music which some might find annoying but which I thought added to the experience. A human guide looks after health and safety (the tour takes place in often near darkness down steps in a very confined space and under some low hanging rock!) and generally moves things along. There are 3 parts to the tour once you enter from the small vestibule which issues/checks tickets and sells guide books etc.

First, an exhibition area in Maltese and English explaining the site and its place in World and Maltese archaeology (also covered by the audio system). It has internal dark glass walls which look down on the highest level of the site – preserving it from the long term effects of light which has been a major objective of the conservation project and explains also the general darkness of the tour and the fact that even the very low level lighting is only switched on automatically for a few seconds whilst visitors are actually present at a viewing point. No cameras are allowed and they have to be checked in at the vestibule. The small numbers allowed in reflects the sheer physical limitations of the site and also reduces the possibility of breath-induced dampness. The second part consists of an AV presentation in a small theatre area – it covers much of the same material as the exhibition but in more detail and was quite well done I felt. Finally (I guess after around 20-25 minutes so far?) the tour descends a 1 metre wide metal walkway with handrails down slopes and steps in an approximately circular route emerging some 9 “stops” later up a circular stairway. There is hardly room for 10 people to see all the points which are illuminated in turn at each stop in synch with the audio and there has to be a fair bit of give and take as 10 people squash and turn together to see the chambers highlighted on each side!

An interesting issue concerns historic “period” of the site. The 1980 AB evaluation (There is no Nomination File on the UNESCO site) states “This unique monument dates back to early antiquity (about 2,500 B.C.); it is the only known example of a subterranean structure of the Bronze Age.” This initial assignment to the “Bronze Age” has gone viral and is replicated on numerous Web pages including those of UNESCO and (currently!) that of this site! From visiting the site and the Valletta Archaeological Museum (An essential call if you are visiting Maltese archaeological sites! My photo of the site model is from there), as well as reading the technical brochure available on site and numerous Web articles, my understanding is that the site is most definitely NOT “Bronze age”!! It is Neolithic and dates from around 4000 to 2500BC. Its main construction was preceded by Ggantija and succeeded by Tarxian – but overlapping with both. The transition from Neolithic to Bronze age is a topic of some debate within Maltese Archaeology. The Bronze Age certainly started later there than elsewhere. The first Bronze Age site in Malta is Tarxien Cemetery (just down the road from Hal Saflieni) dating to 2500BC and the main one is Borg in-Nadur which represents a later phase from 1500BC. One theory is that their peoples came from Sicily, possibly in 2 waves. Tarxien however is primarily a Stone Age temple site and the Bronze age remains are solely those of cremation rituals (completely different from those the Temple was created for) by people re-using the area – hence the naming of the site as “Tarxian Cemetery” as opposed to “Tarxien Temples”. A few Bronze Age remains have been found at Hal Saflieni too and the exact nature of any use of the temple during the transition period isn’t understood but it is essentially a Neolithic site created using Neolithic technology and supporting Neolithic beliefs and rituals. During my researching I referenced the AB evaluation for Neolithic Ggantija and was amazed to discover this – “the “Ggantija period” (ca. 3000 to ca. 2200 B.C.) is one of the most important periods of the Maltese bronze age”. This was stated in the original 1980 evaluation and carried forward to the 1992 version for the additions! Whoever was involved in these nominations back in 1979 seems to have been obsessed with the “Bronze Age”!

Another question concerns why the site is inscribed separately from the “Megalithic Temples” which were also first inscribed in 1980. Ok, so it is primarily an underground temple whilst the other 7 are all above ground but they all represent the same culture/period (Indeed one of the important aspects of the “underground” carving of Hal Saflieni is that it shows what the interior of an above-ground temple roof looked like). The answer seems to lie in the fact that the Temples were originally inscribed solely as “The Temples of Ggantija”. Malta was following a policy of 1 location = 1 nomination. ICOMOS actually commented that Ggantija inscription would “exclude. … the inclusion of later proposals concerning the analogous sites of Tarxien, Hagar Qim. And Mnajdra”. Their addition in 1992 overturned that decision but left Hal Saflieni rather strangely separate from the other sites of its period! Malta obviously didn’t feel like “losing” a site by incorporating it into a combined “Neolithic monuments of Malta”!