The impact of tourism on the Gozitan archaeological heritage

Abstract

The impact of tourism on the archaeological and artistic heritage of the Maltese islands in general was discussed in a paper delivered at the European Workshop on Cultural Tourism in Mediterranean Islands held in Malta in October 1988 under the aegis of the Division for Higher Education and Research of the Council of Europe and the University of Malta in collaboration with the Mediterranean Institute of the Foundation for International Studies. The paper was published in The Sunday Times of Malta the following month (Bonanno and Buhagiar 1988). In 1990 another Council of Europe workshop, entitled Archaeological Parks and Cultural Tourism, was organised in collaboration with the Foundation for International Studies and the Mediterranean Institute of the University of Malta. The theme of that workshop was in many ways related to that of the present paper, in particular in its fundamental objective, on which the present author, as academic adviser in the organisation, insisted, namely, the preservation, presentation and mise en valeur of archaeological sites. As the title clearly suggests,. however, the workshop dealt with this problem from one particular angle: the interrelationship and mutual impact between the archaeological sites (archaeological parks, to be precise) and cultural tourism. The proceedings of that workshop remained unpublished, but one may refer to a paper by the present author read during a Council of Europe Workshop in Coimbra, Portugal, the following month (Bonanno 1992) in which, very briefly, stock was taken of the major topics and points of discussion raised in the Malta workshop. Much of what follows reflects the contents and spirit of these two contributions, but with reference to Gozo.