I recently visited Ġgantija temples with a US relative and his friend. It has been some years since I visited the site and I must say that it was a complete disappointment.

The ticket, that is not cheap, entitles the visitors to visit 10 sites in the area. Indeed we were given a leaflet showing the “Xagħra Heritage Map” but nobody explained what, where and if we could visit!

The temples themselves are cordoned off and in a sorry state and one can only walk around them with no signs or explanations.

We could only gain access to one section of the temples for a quick look.

There is scaffolding is a number of places that makes photography nearly impossible. To the visitor the place presents itself as an unexplainable heap of prehistoric stones. Some years back there were boards to explain the site and give some basic information to the unguided visitor, but this is all gone.

All the fellow visitors were unguided and left the site in a few minutes. My US guests were looking at each other perplexed as we were leaving the temples, five minutes later.

It was the lady running the souvenir shop who partly saved my embarrassment. She told us that we should visit the Kola Windmill and almost apologised that it was being restored. It was worth seeing the windmill where the signs are at least quite tourist-friendly.

When we asked, we were told that the other eight sites were not open to visitors.

Visitors may expect to find restoration work in progress but they need written signs, explanations, apologies and a fairerdeal.

I hope that Heritage Malta will do something very fast to remedy the situation.

As a start they should train the people at the ticket office to take some active interest in the visitors apart from cashing in their money.

As things stand Heritage Malta could save some money to spend on restoration and replace them with ticket machines.