Ggantija :

The Temples  
 

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The Ggantija or, as it was commonly known in the past, "The Giants Tower", is the better preserved and by far the most impressive prehistoric temple.  it is probably the finest of all ancient remains in these islands comparing with SOnehenge for grandur.  It was cleared round about 1826.

Though no records survived of this operation, the most important find during this dig were the two stone heads of statuettes, now preserved at the Gozo Museum of Archaelogy.

Ggantija consists of two separate systems of courtyards which, like Mnajdra Temples, do not interconnect.  They are known as teh Sough Temple which is bigger, earlier (c. 3600 B.C.) and better preserved, incorporating five large apses and the North Temple which is smaller and a later addition (c. 3000 B.C.) in a 4-apse form.  The great court of teh South Temple measures 23 metres from apse to apse and the height of the wall here is preserved to eight metres, the highest in all the temples.  Here one notices how the successive courses of stone draw in the manner of corbelling, htough it is not possible that the aperture at the top was roofed with stones.  The arch had not yet been known in building construction and the span of the apses here is quite large for any conceivable stone roofing.  Wood or hides might originally have been used as roofing material.

The Gigantic rocks must be several tons in weight, those of the outer wall reaching as high as six meters. There are various theories as to how the people of those days were able to move them with the primitive tools of the period. According to an old myth a female giant called "Sunsuna" carried the rocks on her head from Ta'Cenc (on the other  side of the island).

Two kinds of stone had been used in the construction "tal-franka", the soft stone mainly used inside as portals and floor slabs, and "tal-qawwi", the hard stone which is mostly used for the general construction of the walls.

The interior of the walls was plastered and painted with red ochre.  Trace of this have been found.  The huge megaliths, forming the outer wall (the largest weighing several tons) were built alternatively, one horiszontally and one upright.  The space between the inner and outer walls is filled with rubble and earth.  It is such a system which has given the Ggantija the stability to withstand the depredations fo over 5000 years.  The floor is partly covered with soft stone slabs and partly with "torba", or beaten earth.  Spiral and pitted designs decorate some of teh soft stone slabs.  Ore can hardly see the spirals today but considering their good state of preservation when the site was uncovered, this indicates that the temples had some kind of roofing protection during their use.

Some Archeologists assume that there might be an underground temple below Ggantija similar to the Hypogeum uncovered in Malta, a hypothesis which has not yet been verified. Apart from Ggantija there are other interesting testimonies from prehistoric times, for example: the "Menhir" of Qala, Santa Verna, a smaller Temple also close to Xaghra, and the Temples of Tal-Qighan and Ta' Marziena in Sannat.
In Gozo close to Ta' Cenc one can also observe what are thought to be cart-tracks although their origin has yet to be established.
 

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