A design contest ‘Enhancing the visitor experience in the Ġgantija Heritage Park World Heritage Site’ has been launched by Heritage Malta.

This forms part of the €9.2 million Archaeological Heritage Conservation Project, 85 percent of which is co-financed through the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF), and which includes works on three sites - the Tarxien Temples, the Ġgantija Heritage Park in Xagħra and St Paul’s Catacombs in Rabat.

The aim of the €2.5million project at the Ġgantija Heritage Park is to present an organised and pleasant experience, to the some 150,000 people who visited the temples each year.

The project also aims at highlighting the landscape setting of the temples, mitigating past interventions which had a negative impact.

The expected outcome includes the construction of an ‘interpretation centre’, an ‘exit point’ (including a souvenir shop and other basic amenities), as well as pathways to link the interpretation centre to the temples, and the temples to the exit point.

It also has to include the rehabilitation and landscaping of the Ġgantija Heritage Park, including the restoration and rebuilding of around 200 metres of rubble wall.

All design proposals had to give foremost importance to the respect and safeguarding of the outstanding universal value of thetemples and their setting, as well as the impact on the surrounding urban context.

The closing date for submissions December 16. It is planned that results would be announced on December 19 on www.heritagemalta.org/erdf032 . All entries will be exhibited in Gozo between December and January 13 and at Heritage Malta’s head office in Merchant’s Street, Valletta between January 18 and February 21.