Why go
Knowing the excavation and restoration history makes the modern shelter and visitor centre part of the site’s story. The complex was recorded through successive nineteenth- and twentieth-century investigations, while fragile stone has required reinforcement and protection. Use the displays to connect objects in Valletta with the spaces where they were found.
The full story
Ħaġar Qim was first explored in 1839 by J. G. Vance of the Royal Engineers. His work produced a plan of the buildings and sent a stone altar, decorated slab and statuettes to Valletta. Later excavations by A. A. Caruana, Sir Themistocles Zammit, Thomas Eric Peet and the British School at Rome expanded the record, surveyed the ruins and recovered pottery, flints, stone and clay objects. Those investigations also separated what remains in place from what is now seen in museum collections. In 1949 and 1950, further statuettes and fragments of a larger stone figure were discovered beneath a rectangular stone. Restoration has been cautious, with some stones and a lintel reinforced or replaced in the 1950s. Protective shelters were added to limit further erosion, and the visitor centre provides an introduction and displays. Read these additions as a response to a vulnerable monument, not as decoration around it.