Zurrieq, one of Malta's oldest towns, has a vexed question: why do the 100,000 visitors who pass through to visit out-of-town locations annually do not pause in this interesting town. It is a question the local council has turned into a challenge. The challenge, in a sense, is about how they could be spread and held further, for, at present, the main attractions - the Neolithic Temples and the cliff scenery at Wied iz-Zurrieq - draw all the tourist traffic to the town's southern outskirts, bypassing the town. The two temple complexes, within a kilometre apart on a rugged garigue plateau, deserve to be the main allures. The temples' setting, possibly unchanged since the Neolithic, is highly evocative; in this windswept, sun-baked plateau, you can sense the hushed venerability cast by the temples. Both temple complexes were progressively built and used between 3,600 and 2,500BC.
Hagar Qim is a circular complex consisting of four temples and two opposite entrances, an imposing edifice set on the plateau's crest -its heavy facade and the large upright megaliths that survive give you an idea of its former dominance as a landmark. The temple's design departs from the paired-apses template of Malta's other temples; its intricate jumble of chambers present a puzzling spatial arrangement whose understanding is close to nil.
Mnajdra consists of three juxtaposed temples -the East, Middle, and South temples. Only the East Temple's foundations survive, and the bare Middle Temple has, uniquely, twin frontal entrances -there's an original frontal profile of the temple, hailed as the first ever architectural design, carved on one of its passageway megalith. The South Temple is the best preserved and elegant of any in Malta: its two pairs of chambers, with symmetrical apses, are small and intirTi,ate, and the inner lobe and sanctum has three of its altars propped on round tapered stones. The so- called Oracle Hole is in the first chamber on the right, a small opening that opens into a hidden cubicle that's thought to have been the seat of a hidden oracle.
Down the coast, the next stop for visitors, a small gorge meanders down the humpback cliff towards a creek -the boarding point for boat excursions of Blue Grotto. The area was once a fishing outpost; now it has grown into two small blocks of souvenir shops, restaurants and boathouses. There isn't much to do except have a wander to gawk at the cliff scenery, and have a peek at the Wardija Tower, built by the Knights of Malta as one of the chain of coastal towers in 1657, now housing the local police station.
The Blue Grotto, a large domed cave with a natural buttress and clear azure water inside, about a kilometre south of the creek, has become something of an over-hyped landmark in Malta. So hyped it is, in fact, that 100,000 take a boat excursion annually, and such intense boat traffic now impinges on the cave's atmosphere and leaves an obnoxious pall of exhaust lingering inside.
The town itself, overlooked by guidebooks and tour operators, deserves a closer look. It migttt have an image problem, to start with, as rows of uniform terraced houses -social housing dished out by the government in the 1970s and '80s- form a bland crust around town. But persist towards the town centre, and it becomes obvious why Zurrieq was one of 12 parishes in Malta by 1436. It retains ubiquitous historical detritus: Bronze Age cairns, an Arabic-style turret, towers and sarcophagi from Roman and Byzantine epochs, forts and towers built by the Knights, and layers of mediaeval architecture. The parish church, dedicated to St Catherine, has paintings by some famous artists -Mattia Preti, the Italian artist-at-large courted by the Knights; Antoine de Favray, a French artist also courted by the Knights; and Giuseppi Cali, Malta's most famous artist. The church's ceilings and dome-interior are also exceptionally ornate with baroque sculpturing, a pompousness that is matched during the feast on September 5, renowned particularly for its street decor. The warren of streets around the town, with many squares and many niches of St Catherine, are another illustration of Zurrieq's long evolution: the architecture morphs from mediaeval forms influenced by Sicilian styles to later baroque makeovers.
"We have been actively regenerating the urban centre of the town and its squares," said Adrian Mifsud, the local council's executive secretary, about the council's efforts to draw visitors into the town. "Our present focus for tourism centres on the Xarolla windmill, and after restoration, we are now working on building a permanent exhibition about windmills in Malta in the windmill itself."
Built in 1724, the Xarolla windmill is the only one whose grinding apparatus, a contraption of cogwheels, is still intact. It's weathered to a warm honey-colour, and it's fronted by a farmhouse and (:hapel built in the late 16th century, with the added attraction of the sarcophagi that were stumbled upon during the works which have turned a small area into a garden and pjazza. The shallow jumble of sarcophagi, hewn into the bedrock, many interconnected, were used between the third and seventh centuries during the Roman and Byzantine periods.
Yet the star attraction of Zurrieq is the mediaeval chapel at Hal Millieri on the eastern outskirts of town. The 1450 chapel, dedicated to the Annunciation, is the sole survivor of Casal Millieri -a former hamlet of some 80 inhabitants that was abandoned centuries ago, and whose peasant houses crumbled and disappeared by the 18th century. Now one of Malta's oldest churches, set in a walled garden amid open fields and screened by moody cypresses, the chapel marks an apex in mediaeval architecture in its interior pitched-arches that support the roof. More unique are the 11 excellently-rendered 15th century frescoes of the saints most venerated in Malta at the time. The saints, in singles or pairs, are dressed in colourful vestments and ceremonial Ct)ristian hats, and are depicted in lofty poses as if levitating, a style reminiscent of Byzantine frescoes yet also displaying Romanesque influences. It's more unique than Wied IZ-Zurrieq or Blue Grotto, but it gets just a few hundred visitors every year Zurrieq's vexation, and challenge.
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