On the edge of Xagħra, on a plateau looking east over Ramla valley, two stone temples stand side by side inside a single boundary wall. They were built between roughly 3600 and 3200 BC, which makes them older than Stonehenge, older than the Egyptian pyramids and among the oldest free-standing structures anywhere on earth. The Gozitans who lived here in later centuries could not believe humans had moved stones this size, so they credited a giantess. Ġgantija means the giantess’s place.
By Gozo Activities Team 3 September 2026 3 min read
What you will see
The temples are built from huge limestone blocks, some over five metres long and weighing tens of tonnes, arranged in the clover-leaf plan of chambers that all Maltese temples share. The outer wall still stands to six metres in places. Inside, you walk through a sequence of rounded rooms where altars, hearths and libation holes survive, along with the remains of plaster that was once painted red.
The southern temple is the older and larger of the two, and the more complete. The northern one is smaller and later. What strikes most visitors is not the decoration, which is sparse, but the scale: the sense of a community of a few hundred farmers deciding to build this, and managing it, with stone tools and rollers.
The site is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, listed together with the other megalithic temples of Malta.
The visitor centre
Start at the visitor centre before the temples. It explains who the temple builders were, what they ate and how they died, and it displays the finds from the site: figurines, pottery and the carved stone blocks that were removed for safety. Twenty minutes in here turns a pile of big stones into a story. A walkway then leads through the fields to the temples, with the view over the valley to Ramla as a bonus.
Ta’ Kola windmill and Xagħra
Your ticket usually includes Ta’ Kola windmill nearby, an 18th-century mill with its machinery intact and the miller’s rooms furnished as they were. Xagħra itself is one of the friendlier villages on Gozo, with a big square, good bakeries, a pair of small show caves with stalactites in private houses, and Calypso’s Cave viewpoint on the edge of the plateau.
Practical notes
- Opening. Daily, with shorter hours in winter and closures on a few public holidays. Check Heritage Malta for current times.
- Tickets. Buy at the visitor centre. A multi-site Heritage Malta pass is worth it if you are also visiting the Citadel museums or the temples on Malta.
- Time. About an hour and a half including the visitor centre.
- Getting there. Buses from Victoria to Xagħra stop near the site. By car it is ten minutes from the capital. By bike it is on our Xagħra and Ramla eBike route.
- Heat and shade. The temples are open to the sky. Go early in summer and take a hat.
Combine it with
Ramla Bay is a short descent below the plateau, which makes the obvious day: temples in the morning, beach after lunch. Our guide to things to do in Gozo puts the rest of the island around it.
