The Tarxien temples are five thousand years old. They sit behind a gate at the end of an ordinary street, with houses on three sides.
There is no dramatic setting. You walk past a corner shop and there they are.
How that happened
A farmer kept hitting stone with his plough and reported it in 1913.
By then the village was already there. Excavation took several years and the town simply grew around the site.
Tarxien is one of Malta’s six UNESCO World Heritage temple sites, and the only one hemmed in by houses.
What is inside
Four linked temple structures, spirals cut into the stone, and the lower half of a very large statue.
The carving here is the finest found at any of the temples.
The originals of the best carvings are in the National Museum of Archaeology in Valletta. What you see on site are copies, put there to stop further weathering.
Do the museum first
Tarxien makes far more sense after the National Museum of Archaeology, where the carvings and the figures are lit and labelled.
Doing it the other way round leaves you looking at low walls and wondering what the fuss is.
The museum is on Republic Street in Valletta and holds the Sleeping Lady from the Hypogeum as well.
Visiting Tarxien
- Allow 45 minutes to an hour.
- A raised walkway runs over the site, so you look down on it.
- Partly covered, but not fully. There is little shade in the middle of the day.
- Buses to Paola stop a few minutes’ walk away.
Parking is street parking in a residential area, which is tight. The bus is easier.
The Hypogeum is 10 minutes away
The Ħal Saflieni Hypogeum is a short walk through Paola, which is why people book the two for the same morning.
The difference is booking. The Hypogeum takes a small number of visitors a day and sells out months ahead. Tarxien you can walk into.
If the Hypogeum is sold out, Tarxien and the museum together cover much of the same ground.
