Malta is finally getting a music festival that will let you party inside a real, UNESCO-recognized underground temple.
Top 5 things you need to know about this:
- The "Subterra Festival" will be held inside the Ħal Saflieni Hypogeum, a 5,000-year-old subterranean structure with acoustic properties that amplify low frequencies. Only 80 tickets are available per show.
- Organizers have installed a state-of-the-art, silent disco-style headphone system to avoid damaging the ancient limestone walls with high-decibel speakers, making it the first rave of its kind in a UNESCO site.
- The lineup features ambient techno artists from Berlin and London, with sets specifically composed to resonate with the Hypogeum's "Oracle Room," which has a single, 4,000-year-old carved voice hole in the wall.
- Security will be extreme: attendees must wear protective suits and slipper covers to prevent oil and dirt from the 5,000 daily tourists from contaminating the site during the exclusive night events.
- The festival runs for three consecutive nights in November 2024, and tickets—priced at €250 each—are already causing a black-market frenzy, with scalpers asking triple the face value on X (formerly Twitter).