Saveguarding Malta's heritage

Christine Buttigieg of The Malta Independent spoke to Pierre Cassar of Heritage Malta. He tells her about the limited resources available for the upkeep and protection of Maltese heritage sites. Some excerpts:

I think that along the years there has been more awareness amongst the public regarding the uniqueness of what we have, particularly our megalithic temples. Despite Malta’s small size we have three listings in the UNESCO World Heritage Sites. Valletta is one of them, the Hal-Saflieni Hypogeum has a stand-alone listing, and the megalithic temples of Malta and Gozo are grouped in another listing. Technically this is what we have to offer to the hundreds and thousands of tourists who visit our island. Sea and sand can be found anywhere in the Mediterranean but the megalithic temples are unique to our islands.

Let’s get back to the public’s perception of our heritage. The turning point came in early 2003, if I’m not mistaken, when acts of vandalism were committed on the Mnajdra temples. Here we realised that our cultural heritage was at risk and that eventually led to a specific focus by the government to protect these sites and to basically bring them to the top of the agenda in cultural heritage. Nowadays we have a lot of interest from schoolchildren and we believe that if we invest in children we will be on the right track to safeguarding our heritage..

Security was stepped up in practically all sites with specific focus on the megalithic temples because we believe that what happened was a disgrace to society. Not just to local society but to international society at large. We are currently in the process of stepping up security not just through human resources but also through technology. But these things do come at a price and our budget is quite limited. So we have to establish priorities and our priority at the moment is to upgrade our sites while making them more accessible to the public..

..I think there are some upcoming artists who have a particular liking to archaeology because of the megalithic temples. It is interesting that people, particularly foreigners, request to have private meditation sessions in the temples. They believe that the temples have a strong spiritual aura and they travel from all over the world to experience this. Some local artists have made it a point to focus their themes and works on the rich archaeological past of our islands...