The Great Pyramids of Giza in Egypt are widely regarded as the ultimate in ancient buildings, but here on the island of Gozo they seem like examples of modern architecture.
For reasons lost in the fog of time, the oldest free-standing monuments in the world -- estimated to be 5,500 years old -- are found not by the banks of the Nile or on Salisbury Plain but on this small Mediterranean island, Malta's sleepier and greener little sister. A thousand years before the first pyramid rose from the sands of Egypt and centuries before Druid astronomers conceived of Stonehenge, the temples of Ggantija stood in Gozo -- and had long been in use.
Just who built these Stone Age cathedrals and what powerful deity commanded such fervent devotion can only be guessed at. Whatever their origins and motivation, Ggantija's builders were certainly hard workers and had a natural sense of the dramatic.
Well-preserved, the two temples are built of large slabs of local limestone shaped with flint tools and laboriously moved to the site on stone rollers and then hauled into place by hand. The massive structures are dramatically sited on the edge of a plateau, surrounded by meadows speckled with wildflowers and clumps of bougainvillea, and have a sweeping view of the blue Mediterranean.
Archaeologists think the people who erected Gozo's temples came originally from Sicily, possibly over a land bridge now covered by the sea. Among Malta's and Gozo's archaeological puzzles are "cart ruts," deep parallel grooves -- apparently created by centuries of dragging things back and forth over the same route -- that link local Stone and Bronze Age sites and also seem to connect with similar ruts in Sicily.
Two stone female heads and a carving of a serpent were found at Ggantija, suggesting that a fertility divinity was worshiped there as at other prehistoric sites in Malta. At the temple complex at Tarxien and the subterranean burial vault of Hypogeum on the mainland, built a few centuries after Ggantija, artfully crafted statues of the famous "fat goddess" have been found.
These are representations of a serene-faced woman of elephantine proportions, usually depicted wearing a long, elegant, pleated skirt. Apparently the goddess of fertility, she was appeased by frequent animal sacrifices, judging by the animal images on temple altars and the many charred bones found at the sites.
Ggantija doesn't have the graceful lines and beautiful decorative carving of later Maltese ancient temples -- the curved shapes of the two temples have been likened to obese female forms -- but with its splendid setting, massive size and aura of awesome antiquity it makes a powerful impression that lingers long in the mind.
The culture that built the Ggantija and Tarxien temples mysteriously vanished around 2600 B.C., leaving only mute, fire-scorched stones behind. However, they may somehow have subliminally affected Maltese -- and especially Gozoan -- taste in ecclesiastical architecture.
Although it long ago collapsed, one of the Ggantija temples had an enormous domed roof, made by "corbeling," or overlapping flat rocks. To this day, Maltese (who are among Europe's most devout Roman Catholics) are inordinately fond of large, domed stone churches. Gozo isn't very big, only 8 miles by 5, but each of its 13 small villages has a massive domed church that could easily be a cathedral anywhere else.
Gozo is separated from its big sister by the Gozo Channel, which is less than 5 miles wide: The frequent ferries from Cirkewwa in the northwest corner of Malta to the little fishing port of Mgarr on Gozo do the trip in 15 minutes. Close as they are, the two islands are different in climate, geology and atmosphere.
Gozo gets more rain than most of Malta, and its soil retains it better, so the island usually stays verdant during the baking Mediterranean summer. Malta has a rocky, rolling terrain, but Gozo is dotted with small buttes, mini-versions of the ones found in the American Southwest -- except instead of a few cactuses, they are usually topped by stone-walled villages and a massive domed church.
With about a tenth of the population and territory of Malta, and lacking the bigger island's many sheltered harbors, Gozo has always been a quieter and less commercialized place, which is ** what a lot of people like about it. "See it now," Maltese tell you, a note of urgency in their voices. "See it before it changes."
A lot of Maltese have weekend retreats on Gozo and use them to escape the frenetic pace of Valletta, the capital, and Sliema, the hotel-lined beach resort where most foreign tourists -- Malta sees about 1 million a year -- stay and play. Some Maltese also come to savor Gozo's old-fashioned Maltese lifestyle, still largely based on fishing and small-scale agriculture. Malta was a British colony for more than 150 years, and English is an official language and universally spoken. The common tongue, however, is Maltese: a daunting melange of Phoenician, Arabic, Italian, Spanish, French and English.
Gozo's Maltese-style bread is said to be crustier and tastier than Malta's, and the rabbit stew -- which, despite an abundance of excellent seafood, is considered Malta's national dish -- is much more savory. The Oleander restaurant, a small family-run bistro in Xaghra, is particularly noted for its tasty rabbit stew, made with local rabbit, lots of wine and garlic and served with fresh-baked bread and the cookie-shaped chunks of gbejniet -- pepper-covered goat's cheese -- that are a Gozo specialty. With Malta, Gozo is just about dead center in the Mediterranean and has been affected by virtually all the influences and conflicts the region has known from antiquity to the present.
Ulysses, for instance, stopped by Gozo on his legendary Mediterranean-circling odyssey and was entranced by the nymph Calypso. For seven years, Ulysses lived blissfully with Calypso in her seaside cave, which from his description was the Ritz of caverns: "It was indeed a spot where even an immortal visitor must pause to gaze in wonder and delight."
What purports to be Calypso's cave is on a bluff near Ggantija, overlooking the sandy beach of Ramla. Calypso must have been feeding Ulysses funny mushrooms: This cave is cramped and damp and utterly lacking in delights. Most visitors can't imagine spending seven minutes in it, let alone seven years.
Malta was heavily fortified in the Middle Ages, when it was a crusader bastion, but Gozo was only lightly defended. During the "Great Siege" of 1565, a large Turkish army attacked Malta. It was beaten off with heavy losses -- a victory that made Malta's defenders, the Knights Hospitalers of St. John, the heroes of Christendom -- but not before most of the population of Gozo was slaughtered or carried off into slavery. Some Maltese will tell you that Gozo's wary attitude toward off-islanders -- even if they're wearing bathing suits instead of armor -- dates from this horrendous event.
Gozo's low-key capital was renamed Victoria by the British, but everyone calls it Rabat, the original name. Overlooking the town is a walled citadel, built on the site of both Roman and Bronze Age fortresses, that was constructed after the siege to give the surviving Gozoans a place to hide if the Turks showed up again.
The view from the semicircular citadel ramparts is superb. All of Gozo is at your feet, a green carpet dotted with toylike churches and with a ragged fringe of sandy beaches.
There are a couple of small museums within the Rabat citadel. The Archaeological Museum displays artifacts found at Ggantija and other ancient sites, and the Natural History Museum has exhibits on local flora and fauna and also a stuffed and mounted specimen of the now-extinct breed of Maltese falcon, birds once so prized for their hunting ability that only kings could afford them. The Knights of St. John "rented" Malta from the King of Spain for an annual fee of one live falcon.
The citadel also contains Gozo's cathedral, which is unremarkable except for the fact that the bishop building it ran out of money, and it is one of the few churches on the island without a dome. However, an ingenious solution was found to this embarrassing predicament: A Sicilian artist, Antonio Manuele, was hired to paint an optical illusion of the interior of a dome on the cathedral ceiling. He did such a good job on the fake dome that you can get dizzy looking up at it.
Gozo is beginning to change and become more tourist-oriented, but the Maltese government is trying to control the development and prevent Gozo from becoming another crowded, mass-market resort like Sliema. There are only four five-star hotels in the entire Republic of Malta, for instance, and two of them are on Gozo, the Mgarr Bay and the Ta' Cenc.
It won't change overnight, but change Gozo will. So see it now while old men in black suits ride out on rusty bicycles to work in their green fields, women sit in doorways making lace, and rabbit stew is still on the menu at the Oleander.
IF YOU GO . . .
There is an hourly ferry service between Malta (Cirkewwa) and Gozo (Mgarr) during July and August. The ferry service operates at two-hourly intervals the rest of the year.
For information about Gozo and Malta, write to the Malta National Tourist Office, 249 East 35th St., New York, N.Y. 10016, or call (212) 213-6686.