I’ll post separately about the Cittadella since it’s such an interesting fortification which is complex and rich in history. But below, as a starter since I have so many photos, are views from the walls of the Cittadella which visitors can freely walk around.
Gozo’s museum of archaeology is located inside an historic house, the Casa Bondi, just inside the walls of the Cittadella. Care was taken with the restoration of the building, which has been sensitively renovated and retains some architecturally interesting features. The museum was originally opened in 1960 as a general museum and has specialised in just archaeology since 1986.
A selection of Roman anchors.
A Roman tablet dating to the second half of the second century AD.
This skeleton was found inside of a broken container, and it’s thought that it might be a burial conducted in a hurry by sailors who wanted to create a grave of sorts.
A slab which noted the efforts of one soldier, Bernardo De Opuo, to fight the Ottomans when they invaded Gozo in 1551. Rather than see his wife and two daughters dragged into slavery, Opuo killed them and he was then killed himself in the fighting. He’s perhaps an unlikely hero, but there’s a street named after him in Gozo as well.
The Maymūnah Stone, which is an Arabic tombstone which dates to around the twelfth century, a reminder of the different ownership of the islands. The stone itself was reused and was originally a stone from the Roman period and inscriptions from that date remain. The islands were Muslim until around 1224 when the Arabs left Gozo.
This is the life-sized foot from a Roman statue and the stone was found inside of a wall inside the Cittadella.
This tablet was found in 1855 and dates to the Punic period of Maltese history, to around the third century BC. Some of the tablet is missing, but it’s known to be a dedication to the renovation of a temple.
This isn’t a huge museum and a visit isn’t likely to last more than an hour, but it’s well put together and has numerous interesting exhibits. I got in with my Heritage Malta pass, but it’s possible to buy individual admission or get a joint ticket with other historic attractions in Gozo.
I misunderstood this sculpture, I thought that it was meant to be visible from the other side of the harbour, which struck me as slightly strange. Although technically it can be seen from the other side, apparently though it’s meant to make the word ‘love’ appear on the surface of the water. Which is just a little pointless for some of the year as the water isn’t anywhere near flat enough for that effect. It was conceived by Richard England who is a Maltese sculptor and architect who has designed numerous buildings on the islands.
Personally, I think it looks rather banal, especially with the number of love locks under it, primarily because it’s badly sited so it gets in the way of pedestrians. Anyway, it’s inoffensive and it’s liked by many other people.
The sign is just visible in the back of this photo.
This is the return flight on my third, and likely final, visit to Malta in 2019. The flight was full today so the usual A320 was used and the boarding was organised, if not particularly rushed. The Club Europe cabin cabin stretched back eight rows and the Euro Traveller cabin also looked nearly full, so a busy flight.
No menu card photo on this journey as the crew couldn’t find them. The meal options were though salmon salad, butter chicken with rice & mini naan and some sort of risotto. Nearly everyone in the first few rows went for the chicken and I couldn’t hear if they ran out by the time that they got to the eighth row.
BA do curries well, and this was no exception, a decent amount of chicken and it was tender and moist. The naan was soft and I liked the mini side salad. The dessert of some kind of strawberry cheesecake was also excellent, and the cheese selection had a really good cheddar as usual. One of the better meals that I’ve had on BA in the Club Europe cabin.
The crew were friendly, efficient and warm, although there was perhaps a lot more potential for engagement. The problem is that I tend to set the best crews as my benchmark, so sometimes other perfectly competent crews don’t seem quite as good in comparison. However, it was easy to get a second gin and tonic, which is my current drink of the month, and sparkling waters.
I took similar photos a couple of weeks ago since the aircraft inevitably took the same route, so here’s another of Valletta, the capital of Malta.
Lots of mountains on the way back, these big hills are the Alps.
The flight arrived around on time and Gatwick impressed me again, as I was able to leave the airport within six minutes of the aircraft doors opening. This has been happening on a continual basis recently, I’m becoming very impressed at Gatwick.
Overall, all rather lovely again.
This plaque is located in Upper Barrakka Gardens and I can imagine that this is well deserved, the bomb disposal teams must have been enormously busy during the Second World War. More bombs were dropped on the islands than were dropped on London and the attacks were relentless for years. The plaque is also relatively new, it was unveiled by Joseph Muscat, the country’s Prime Minister, in 2017.
And here’s another photo of a cat, meandering around in front of the plaque.
I rather over-dosed on Roman history when I visited Trier a couple of weeks ago but although Malta has a lot of Roman history, there’s only one museum dedicated to it. This is a former Roman settlement in Mdina which has some extensive mosaics in the main building, and some other associated buildings which mostly weren’t as grand.
This is the side of the site, with Roman buildings visible in the foreground. They would have been in the background as well, but the British built a road through the site in the mid to late nineteenth century. There were no records made of what was found, so much has unfortunately been lost to history. The Roman site itself was located shortly after, in 1881, during a landscaping project and was then carefully excavated.
More of the external buildings.
A skeleton which was found on the site from an Islamic cemetery built around the ninth century AD. The cemetery was built around the former Roman buildings and numerous Islamic gravestones have been found.
Roman glass.
I’m not really into my Roman columns, but this is apparently an internationally important example of an Italic-Corinthian capital as few are found intact.
More pillars.
This statue of Antonia comes from this site and it’s thought to have been from an administrative building rather than from a residential property.
Another statue found at the site, this time of Claudius, dating from the 1st century AD.
The mosaic in the main courtyard room.
This is the tablinum, so could have been used as a reception room or study. There have been some fairly crude repairs to the mosaic floor during the later Roman period which look like I’ve done them.
Not much of the mosaic flooring has survived in the triclinium, which would have been used as a family dining room.
I had a Heritage Malta pass so didn’t pay for admission directly, but there are also options such as the Rabat ticket which gives admission to a few historic sites in the area. Visiting just the Roman museum is though perhaps just a little expensive at €6.
Overall, I thought that this was a reasonably sized museum, which I deliberately visited from the end to the beginning, solely because there was a group of school children behind me. Fortunately they were well behaved children who didn’t get in my way, or indeed that of any other visitor. It’s a shame that more of the site didn’t survive the British road building, but at least a decent amount is still visible.
Kinnie is sometimes known as the national Maltese soft drink, and it’s certainly quite widely available on the islands. It’s a bitter orange flavour drink which is vaguely similar to Irn-Bru. It’s a distinctive taste, which I like, and it’s apparently exported around the world, although I can’t recall ever seeing it. There’s a logo on the can which says “available on Amazon”, so I can imagine there are many drinkers of the product around the world who can’t otherwise source it without buying it on-line.
Malta Maritime Museum is located in Birgu in a building which was formerly used by the Royal Naval Bakery. After the end of the Second World War the building was instead used by the Admiralty Constabulary and it remained empty after the British left in 1979. After some years when the building stated to deteriorate it was decided to turn it into the country’s first dedicated maritime museum.
Visitors enter on the ground floor and most of the displays are on the first floor. I decided to enter the museum by wandering by the ticket desk and finding myself in the exhibits area, before realising that I had probably better check with the ticket desk. This was excusable as there were some VIPs cluttering up the reception area, making it hard for me to ascertain what I was supposed to do. After I presented my Heritage Malta pass the staff member gave me a map of the site, which proved helpful in working out where I was supposed to go.
One of the first sights in the museum is this Roman anchor, with this being one of the largest which has been found.
In a slightly separate part of the building is some old machinery in quite a spacious display area. Indeed, the whole museum is spacious and they appear to have more space than they do exhibits at times. The building is probably too large for the museum as it currently stands, but they can always expand and keep building up the already substantial number of exhibits.
Some kind of motor thing for a boat.
The Knights of the Order of St. John, who ran the islands for centuries, had a strong navy. This is a model of one of their carracks, the Santa Maria, which was originally a Muslim ship which the Knights pinched. The Knights were very proud of their ship until a boy decided he’d play with gunpowder on its deck and managed to set the cannons off all by himself. In what could be considered as an unfortunate incident, the ship sank. It’s still there, at the bottom of Galley Creek.
This is quite special, it’s the instruction manual for signalling on ships owned by the Knights.
A replica of the naval uniform worn by a Captain fighting for the Knights.
The Amati Column, which was erected in 1651, formerly stood on the waterfront in Valletta, named after the Italian Knight who financed a shelter in the area.
There are some models of ships in the museum, this is one of the larger and more impressive ones. At this point I would comment on the lighting in the museum as it was nearly dark in some places, making reading the information boards difficult. They also decided that it would be useful to make the writing quite small, which added a game show element to proceedings, it became a little like a Krypton Factor test to try and see the text.
Sailors weren’t allowed to gamble on board boats, but they did anyway. These are dice which the sailors created from whittling away bone, with an uncompleted one on the right hand side.
This figurehead from HMS Hibernia was for a time located at the entrance to the nearby Fort St. Angelo and there is a sign there indicating where it used to be. When the British military left Malta they took this figurehead with them and between 1979 and 1994 it was displayed at the Royal Navy Museum in Portsmouth. When this maritime museum in Malta opened the British kindly sent it back again.
The log book from HMS Hibernia.
A collection of items from the NAAFI.
A recreation of what a Royal Navy bar would have looked like.
A letter from the Rear Admiral to the President of Malta following the departure of British troops.
Overall, I liked this museum as it was spacious and there was plenty to see. The lighting perhaps needs looking at in places and it was a shame that there weren’t many other visitors when I was there. It’s a comprehensive museum covering maritime history from the earliest days right through to the end of the twentieth century. It’s not as polished as some of the other newer Heritage Malta museums, but still worth visiting.
Located near to the Ħaġar Qim Temples, these temples are of a similar date although are made from a different type of stone. The site was first investigated at the same time and there are many other commonalities between them.
I had my ticket ready to enter the temples, although the man in the shed checking tickets smiled and waved me through without checking. He seemed to be checking the tickets of other people, so I must have just looked very trusting. Anyway, I had a ticket, so all was well and I could remain guilt free.
They selected a nice spot for their temple, extensive sea views. As may be evident from the photo, it was about to pour with rain during my visit, so the shelter was appreciated.
Interestingly, and shockingly, much of this site is repaired after a serious vandalism attack in April 2001 when 60 of the stones were toppled over. Some clever restoration took place to correct the damage, which must have been heart-breaking for the museum authorities. The police apparently knew which three people did it, but had insufficient evidence to prosecute.
One of the apses in the temple.
Looking out towards the edge of the site. Unfortunately I’m not enough of a temple expert to really understand this site, but there was an upper and lower section, with the upper section having been constructed first. It’s not known why the temples were built, but it’s thought to have had a religious or fertility related significance.
Some of the more eroded stones. As with other temples, they have a relevance to the solstices, when light would have shone through. Whether this was for religious or more practical farming reasons isn’t known, but what a clever piece of engineering to be able to make that work. The protective shelter over the top of the site was only added in 2009, perhaps a little too late to prevent the damage from the elements.
These temples are part of a heritage walk along the coast, which I walked some of, but the rain was too hard to complete it. I might have persisted but it started thundering and lightning, and I didn’t want to be standing on a high cliff edge with that going on….
This is the Congreve Memorial which commemorates the life of Walter Norris Congreve, a well respected English army officer who later became the Governor of Malta between 1924 and 1927. Congreve was also awarded the substantial honour of the Victoria Cross.
Congreve was buried between the main island of Malta and the small island (or big rock) of Filfla.
Congreve’s memorial procession in Valletta in 1927.
Photos of the burial at sea which were published in the Illustrated London News.
