Mnajdra, Ħaġar Qim desecration

In 1977, on one of my customary visits to the Mnajdra Temples, I was startled and taken aback to view an array of stone-cutting machinery and crane structures a few metres away from the complex. Further investigation revealed, to my horror, that the surrounding enclave of these sacred stones was being quarried to market a so-termed 'Malta Marble' product (non-existent since Malta is a sedimentary geological formation).

Immediately, I put pen to paper for an article entitled 'Murder at Mnajdra' which appeared in The Sunday Times of Malta. The article strongly condemned "murderous 20th century man's craving lust for industrialisation and commercial gain" and referred to the quarrying as "a most shameful and atrocious act". It seemed incomprehensible that someone was actually "cutting the very rock on which one of our most unique historical monuments actually sits". I pleaded that "it is imperative that the operations are stopped immediately".

Officialdom was irked, presumably not only by the criticism but also by the statement "it is ironical that this destruction should take place during a period of local history in which exaggerated importance is given to things Maltese, and the habit of reducing things international to parochial level".

What I had not reckoned was that this was the period of the island's political dark ages and criticism of government or its actions was not tolerated. No sooner had the article been published than at 2 a.m. the next morning, I was rudely awakened by rough knocks at the door of my house, and summoned by police officers to Castille and there, strongly denigrated for my criticism by the then Prime Minister and several Cabinet ministers.

Later that week I was called to a meeting at the Mnajdra site to convince me that the explosives were not damaging the temple. I remained not only unconvinced then, but to this day I maintain not only that damage was done then, but also that the storm collapse sustained some years later was expedited by those explosions and the machine vibrations. Quarrying was eventually stopped, but the damage, regretfully, had been done.

Now, over three decades later, I again find myself having to write to condemn another act of desecration of our Neolithic sites. My complaints this time focus on the tents covering the two temples of Ħaġar Qim and Mnajdra and more so on the abominable structure designed to house the visitors centre adjacent to Ħaġar Qim.

While I know that protection was necessary, I am not convinced that the tents, more suitable for covering football stadiums, offer the best solutions. While the tents do provide protection, I am sceptical about the penetration of horizontally blown damaging salt air from the sea. If other great monuments of the ancient world were similarly 'protected', we may well have had the Millennium Dome finally finding a proper use, placed over the Sarsen Stones of Salisbury, or perhaps the Giza Pyramids covered by a glass Louvre.

Regretfully, the tents have destroyed the temples' relationship both internally and externally with the surrounding landscape. These sacred stones were raised in homage to earth and sky and built at a time when the land had more meaning and man lived in harmony with nature and its forces. Now, no longer do the silent stones of Ħaġar Qim rise proudly in homage towards the heavens and no longer do the solstice markers of Mnajdra nestle gently into the protective womb of Mother Earth.

While the structures may be justified for providing protection, (I personally still find their aesthetic impact objectionable), what is definitely unforgivable is the over-scaled banal structure erected to house the visitors centre.

On the approach to Ħaġar Qim, the structure, more appropriate for an industrial estate, is totally unsuitable in scale and form for such a sensitive location. The building is unsympathetic and unsuitable to both the physical and mnemonic characteristics of the site, eliminating both the sacredness and magic of the ambiance. Ironically, the promoters of the project say it was designed "to avoid physical impact on the landscape" and "to have minimal visual impact on Ħaġar Qim temples". So much for meaningless archi-speak!

Yet this was the result of an international competition organised by Heritage Malta, with the winning scheme coming from a firm of foreign architects and financed by the European Union. Perhaps the designers should have been reminded that good manners and listening to the voices of the site are essential in any architectural intervention, more so if the site and the surrounding context are particularly sensitive ones.

Surely a less aggressive solution would have been more appropriate. A descending one storey series of terraces (from restaurant to car park level) with rubble wall cladding emulating the surrounding traditional terraced dry-stone field walls, would definitely have provided a less invasive and damaging solution. Strangely enough, the actual site for the visitors centre in the original competition brief was in the adjacent quarry where it would surely have been less conspicuous. One wonders why the change took place.

Now, one hears that a design competition is also being organised for a visitors centre at the Ġgantija and Xagħra Circle complex in Gozo. One hopes that the result will not be as catastrophic as that at Ħaġar Qim. What remains a constant worrying concern is that ill-conceived projects such as this are constantly being given the go-ahead by an every-erring Malta Environment and Planning Authority. A multitude of ill-conceived designs are repeatedly approved by this supposedly protective watchdog.

One example is the recent approval of a most unfortunate scheme for the country's most important urban piazza, our capital city's St George's Square. The ornate, plagiarised, funky light trees, the ill-suited street furniture and the tasteless synchronised ground lights (more suitable for a Paceville-like environment), are all inappropriate to the austere sobriety of the Palace façade and the town's historic fabric. This infelicitous scheme was unanimously approved by all members of the Mepa committee, apart from one distinguished architect, scholar and historian's negative vote.

May I suggest to any readers who happen to go out to experience the mastodonic magnitude of the Ħaġar Qim crime, on their return past Siġġiewi, that they glance at the Żebbuġ townscape and see how it has now been destroyed by an oversized monolithic residential complex, completely out of scale and jarring violently with the cubic module rhythm of the traditional Maltese built-typology.

Irreversible damage is being caused and will continue unless Mepa learns to evaluate the aesthetic quality of submitted projects, and more so, the relationship to their context and surroundings. We have had too many calamities over the past few years and it is high time to stop further desecration of our land.