Skorba and Ta' Ħaġrat, Mġarr's quiet temples

Malta’s megalithic temples have a famous face, Ħaġar Qim above the sea or Ġgantija on Gozo, and a barely known one in a farming village in the west. Skorba and Ta’ Ħaġrat are that second face. They’re less striking and far less visited, but in return you see them without crowds, for very little money and in the kind of countryside their builders actually lived in.

Why two temples in one village

Both are in Mġarr, and both were added in 1992 to the megalithic temples of Malta World Heritage inscription. UNESCO counts six components in that listing, built over five thousand years ago and regarded as some of the first free-standing stone buildings anywhere. The other four are on Gozo, on the south coast and at Tarxien. Having two of the six in the same parish says a lot about how busy this corner of the island once was.

Skorba, the oldest

Heritage Malta explains that Skorba was dug fairly late, in the early 1960s, by the archaeologist David Trump, and that this turned out to be an advantage. With more modern techniques than earlier digs, it filled gaps that the first excavations had left open.

The real prize isn’t the temples but what lay beside them. Remains of several huts where the builders lived turned up, from the so-called Skorba phase, with two oval buildings of stone and mudbrick, rock floors, a paved yard, plenty of pottery, animal bones and fragments of stylised female figurines. The earliest structures date from the first phases of the Neolithic and rank among the oldest on the islands. There are also two megalithic buildings, one from the Ġgantija phase and a later one from the Tarxien phase.

Ta’ Ħaġrat, a temple under a carob tree

Ta’ Ħaġrat was discovered in 1917 in the very centre of the village. Before it was dug, it was a round mound of stones topped by a huge carob tree in a field. It was excavated in 1923, 1925, 1926, 1953 and 1961, and pottery from both before and after the temple period turned up, showing the site was in use before and after the building went up.

There are two buildings. The larger and older has a semicircular facade with a monumental doorway opening onto a rectangular space of roughly 2.5 by 4.5 metres, with semicircular rooms on three sides. The smaller one came later, on a similar plan with smaller stones, cut into the eastern room of its neighbour. It’s all local coralline limestone, the hard stone, and Heritage Malta invites you to picture its builders working with nothing but stone, bone and wooden tools.

Tickets, hours and where to buy

Adults pay €3.50 per temple; youths aged 12 to 17, students and anyone over 60 pay €3; and 6 to 11-year-olds pay €2.50. There’s also a combined ticket in Heritage Malta’s online shop. According to its official opening-hours images, in the season ending in October 2026 both open daily from ten until six, and in winter, from 1 November, from nine until five. Entry stops thirty minutes before closing. Unusually, tickets are also sold in the village itself, at the local council, the Mġarr Farmers Bar and two restaurants, each keeping its own hours.

To put the price in context, adult entry to Ġgantija or to Ħaġar Qim and Mnajdra is €10. Here you see two sites from the same World Heritage listing for €7, and without the coach parties.

How I’d plan it

I’d take route 44 from Valletta, start with Skorba, the older of the two, and walk on to Ta’ Ħaġrat. I’d go first thing, as both are open-air and the summer sun is fierce. Afterwards I’d head down for lunch and a swim at Ġnejna Bay, which has the 101 from the village in summer. If you’re only seeing one temple complex on your whole trip, though, my vote goes to Ħaġar Qim and Mnajdra, which I find far more striking.