Destinations: Beneath Malta

Visitors to Malta and Gozo, 60 miles off the southern coast of Sicily, are often immediately impressed by the islands’ honey-colored limestone basilicas erected 500 years ago by the Knights of St. John. But you have to go back 5,000 years to reach Malta’s earliest, and perhaps most awe-inspiring, temples—some predating Stonehenge and the Giza pyramids by 1,000 years.

The most unusual of the two-dozen megalithic temples dotting the islands is a large underground catacomb known as the Hypogeum, located in Paola, a suburb of the Maltese capital of Valletta.

During the second half of the fourth millennium B.C., the Hypogeum (a word derived from the Greek ipogaina, or underground chamber) was constructed by unknown Neolithic people. Using antler picks and stone mallets, these builders enlarged natural fault lines in the walls of subterranean limestone caves, creating a series of rock-cut tombs linked by corridors that covered more than 1,600 square feet.