Heritage sites welcomed nearly 60 per cent more visitors in 2021 but the numbers are still below pre-pandemic levels.

Gozo’s prehistoric monument Ġgantija continued to record the highest number of paying visitors followed by Ħaġar Qim and Fort St Elmo.

Some 451,000 people paid to visit for Heritage Malta’s sites last year, an increase on 2020’s figures. But the numbers are still much lower than in 2019, before the COVID-19 outbreak, when nearly 1.7 million people visited the attractions.

Last year, some COVID-19 measures remained in place, with museums and sites closed for a month from mid-March to mid-April.

The agency gets 88 per cent of its revenue from entrance fees and, after seeing a 66 per cent revenue drop from 2019 levels, was left with a deficit of more than €1.4 million last year.

“The number of paying entrances remain far less than pre-COVID-19 levels,” the agency said in its 2021 report.

All Heritage Malta sites followed a similar pattern last year, increasing the number of visitors from 2020 but remaining far behind the 2019 numbers.

Borġ in-Nadur bucks a trend

The only site to buck the trend was archaeological site Borġ in-Nadur, which saw more paying visitors than in pre-pandemic times, going from more than 2,800 visitors in 2019 to almost 3,500 last year.

Fort St Elmo “emerged strongest” among all the Valletta sites while the National Museum of Archaeology saw a “staggering increase” of visitors from the previous year.

Heritage Malta’s €1.4 million deficit came despite receiving more than €12 million in government aid “to meet the agency’s administrative expenditure”.

The agency had received almost another €13 million at the height of the pandemic in 2020.

“Further financial assistance from the government is being discussed with the ministry for the national heritage, the arts and local government until the situation improves,” the agency said.

To make up for lost profits, Heritage Malta is studying the possibility of commercialising cultural sites across the islands, by setting up cafes in them – extending a model already in place at the National Museum of Modern Art.

The agency controversially entered into an agreement with a private operator to trial run a catering venture inside Mdina’s Vilhena Palace this summer.

In 2021, the agency made €47,000 in food sales, an increase of 77 per cent on 2020 sales. But this only amounts to 1.4 per cent of all revenue.

The agency also saw 56,671 non-paying visitors last year, most of whom were holders of the Heritage Malta student and senior passports.

Heritage Malta also published a list of art works, objects of historical value and artefacts that it purchased or received as donations last year.

They include everything from modern and contemporary paintings to fossil shark teeth, mounted insects, stuffed birds, reptiles, mammals and fish preserved in jars, a stuffed shark, volcanic ash collected from Malta after Etna eruptions, historical clothing, firearms, hundreds of face masks and even a small enamel potty.