Tarxien Temples host epic green revival: Maltese families rediscover ancient eco-wisdom

**Ancient wisdom, modern solutions: Sustainability family day at Tarxien temples**

The prehistoric stones of Tarxien Temples have witnessed 5,000 years of Mediterranean sunrises, but last Saturday they framed something entirely new: hundreds of Maltese children learning to make seed bombs while their grandparents compared notes on water-harvesting techniques that once kept island gardens green through August drought.

Organised by Heritage Malta in partnership with the Environment and Resources Authority (ERA), the Sustainability Family Day transformed Malta’s most elaborate temple complex into an open-air classroom where ancient ingenuity met 21st-century eco-anxiety. Between the corpulent stone goddesses and the altar where Bronze-Age farmers once prayed for rain, modern families tried their hand at composting, up-cycling fishing nets into shopping bags, and building mini solar ovens from recycled pizza boxes.

“We wanted to show that sustainability isn’t a foreign import—it’s in our DNA,” said Maria Farrugia, Heritage Malta’s community outreach manager, as a queue of children waited to grind heritage-grain ħobż biż-żejt flour using a limestone quern. “Our forefathers built with local stone, captured every drop of water, and ate seasonally. We just got distracted for a couple of decades.”

The timing is no accident. Malta’s landfill is expected to reach capacity by 2025, water tables are plummeting, and the islands import 70 % of their food. Meanwhile, visitor numbers at Tarxien have dropped 30 % since 2019, as cruise-ship tourists favour Instagram-friendly Blue Lagoon selfies over Neolithic mysteries. Heritage Malta hopes that reframing the temples as living laboratories can reverse both trends.

Local impact was visible in every tent. Qormi baker Johann Falzon handed out samples of ftira leavened with 120-year-old sourdough starter his family kept alive through two world wars. “My nanna used to say ‘throwing away bread is like throwing away fingers’,” he laughed, spraying olive oil on a wood-fired oven built from recycled construction rubble. “Kids today think crusts grow in plastic bags; once they knead dough themselves they never waste it again.”

Over at the rain-water harvesting demo, 82-year-old Żejtun farmer Ċikku Briffa drew a bigger crowd than the VR temple-reconstruction headset next door. “We had three months of water left in July—now we have nine, just by redirecting roof run-off,” he told open-mouthed teenagers who had never seen a 200-year-old limestone cistern actually full. “My father taught me: ‘Ilma jgħodd, ilma jgħadd’—water counts, water passes. They don’t teach that in school.”

By 2 pm the temple forecourt smelled of wild-fennel pesto and freshly sawn olive wood. Children raced paper boats made from old electoral posters down a miniature storm-water channel, cheering when a boat named “Green Party” capsized on a sponge representing over-development. Parents swapped contacts for bulk-buying organic pulses; a Gudja scout troop collected 3,000 plastic bottle-tops in two hours, enough to fund a new camping stove.

Perhaps the most symbolic moment came when ERA staff used a drone to drop a seed bomb of indigenous clover and wild thyme onto the temple’s restored thatched roof. The gesture, broadcast live on Facebook, drew 12,000 views within an hour—triple the number of visitors Tarxien attracted in the whole of January. “Heritage isn’t just what lies beneath the soil,” commented Culture Minister Owen Bonnici, who turned up tie-less and rolled his sleeves to plant a carob sapling. “It’s what we leave on top of it for our children’s children.”

As the sun set behind the copper-domed parish church, families lingered, reluctant to return to petrol stations and supermarket queues. Eight-year-old Leah Zammit from Santa Luċija summed up the mood while clutching a composting-worm box like a new pet: “Miss said the temples are older than the pyramids, but today they felt brand new.”

If Heritage Malta’s gamble pays off, Malta’s oldest monument may yet help secure its newest future—one seed bomb, one sourdough starter, one shared cistern at a time.