In no other site in Malta is the evolution of prehistoric temple building better exemplified than it is at the megalithic temples of Tarxien. The earliest temple, now unfortunately in a vestigial state, goes back to around 2,800 BC while the more recent of the four temples burst out in a blaze of splendour some seven hundred years later.

The spiral, as a decorative motif, is found in many places in Europe from the North Atlantic seaboard to the Aegean; the ones at Tarxien, however, might have been invented, or at least developed, independently. Inside these temples has been found what, for that age, was the most colossal stone sculpture then in existence: originally 2.50 metres in height, the statue, presumably representing a Mother Goddess, has been broken in half and the top part is missing. There is a lot of conjecture about the significance of the Fat Lady statues found in most of the Maltese temples, it is possible that they are examples of female fertility deities prevalent throughout the lands bordering the Mediterranean. Around 1,800 BC the temples, having been abandoned for about two hundred years, were reused by Bronze Age folk as crematoria and as repositories of the ashes of their dead.