Walking. Gossip. Travel.

Tag: Mdina

  • Malta – Northern Region – Mdina – Domus Romana

    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.

  • Malta – Northern Region – Mdina – National Museum of Natural History

    This was the first building that I saw when entering the ancient walled city of Mdina, and it looked a fascinating building. It was included in my Heritage Malta pass, so I went in without really being aware of what it was. The whole visit was rather surreal, a fascinating building clearly packed with history, and a museum which was, to be honest, in the way of seeing the historic interiors. The building is the Vilhena Palace, originally built between 1726 and 1728, built as a grand residence, but later used as a hospital before it was converted into a museum.

    One of the supporting columns under the floor in front of the museum entrance. I liked how this history was revealed, although it wasn’t a theme of the rest of the visit. The nearby toilets were located in an old cellar part of the complex, although there was no explanation of what all the rooms used to be.

    Some of the building is sealed off, I’m not sure what the non-museum part is used for.

    The view out of one of the upper windows, although visitors couldn’t access this.

    I must take Dylan and Leon to another museum of dead animals. Anyway, this is a jaguar.

    And an owl, another of Dylan’s favourites. Although I think he prefers living ones.

    More owls.

    A dead snake, with a dead giant lizard behind it.

    A mackerel shark.

    A turtle of some kind, but the descriptive plaque has fallen off and bits of the skeleton have also fallen off. It’s a little bit symbolic of the whole museum.

    A bat.

    An early Homo Sapiens skull which was found in Kenya.

    Glassware which was found from when the building was used as a hospital, which was between 1909 and 1956.

    A piece of lead shot which was likely fired in battle that was found in the south facing walls of the building. These small displays were some of the more interesting to me, as they had a relevance to the building itself. The collection of dead animals and rocks was no doubt of some importance, but it could have really been housed anywhere.

    Perhaps in the future much more could be done with this historic palace building itself, rather than just using it as a location to house a museum which has no relation to it.

  • Malta – Northern Region – Mdina – City Walls

    Mdina is the former capital city of Malta, but the Knights of the Order of St. John moved it away when they constructed Valletta, which was designed to be easier to defend. Above is the main gateway into the city, which is also known as Città Vecchia and Città Notabile. This isn’t the original entrance way into Mdina as it was re-constructed in 1724 with a Baroque design and it was also designed to be easier to defend.

    The map at the entrance to the walled part of the city shows just how many buildings were located within it.

    The city was never as well defended as Birgu, which was where the bulk of the action took place during the Great Siege, but the defences are still formidable. During the Great Siege the Ottomans did come to try and seize Mdina, but the local governor was able to fool them into thinking there were more troops than there actually were, so they decided not to attack. There’s a story that I’ve read in a few books that the governor also got the females in the city to dress up as troops, as part of the plan to pretend it was better defended than it actually was.

  • Malta – Northern Region – Mdina – St. Paul’s Catacombs (Museum)

    I posted separately about my visit to the St. Paul’s Catacombs, but there is also an interesting museum at the site which gives an introduction to the catacombs. The above map shows the complexity of the site, with visitors entering at the top right, exploring the first catacombs and then crossing over the road before visiting the others.

    Known as the Valeria Inscription, this dates to the fourth to eighth century AD. It was found in 1875 and is one of the oldest inscriptions at the site, although that’s primarily as they haven’t found that many. It reads “Fufica Galena and Curtius Diadoumenos, husband and wife erected this tomb for the well deserving Valeria”.

    What I like about this is that the main part of the inscription mentions who paid for it, which does seem to make sense. If you’re going to a lot of expense, then it seems right that you should get the main mention.

    Part of the catacombs were visible under the glass floor, but there was a little problem that some of this was covered in dirty footprints and the like. This bit was clearer, although it was difficult to know what I was supposed to be looking at.

    The smaller skeleton has a sad story insomuch it’s not known whether this baby had been born or not when it died. There were a large number of skeletons found of children, an unfortunate reality of the number of youngsters who didn’t survive. It’s not clear when the individual died, but it’s thought to be from the Phoenician period.

    This skeleton belongs to a man who was buried at the site between the fourth and second centuries BC. He was aged around 60, which was a comparatively high age for the period, and he apparently suffered from severe arthritis and a spur on one rib.

    An example of how a burial would have taken place.

    The museum was an interesting and useful start to the tour, although it didn’t cover the site in quite as much detail as I’d have ideally liked. However, the displays were presented in an accessible and informative manner, and I liked how one family managed to contain the excitement of their two children who wanted to go down the holes and instead they explained to them the meaning of what there was to see before the kids rushed off.

  • Malta – Northern Region – Mdina – Old Signage

    An old sign on one of the streets in Mdina.

  • Malta – Northern Region – Mdina – St. Paul’s Catacombs

    These catacombs date from the Phoenician and Punic periods, although were used for over 1,500 years at various stages. There’s also a museum which I’ll detail in another post, as there are enough photos below already….

    The site is enormous, with most of the entry points involving walking up and down steps. The first catacomb that visitors enter is spacious inside, probably nearly half a mile of various walkways in what is a maze inside. There are panic buttons located all over the catacombs, which worried me as I wondered why there were lots of panic buttons all over the site.

    Fortunately, this is one of the catacombs which is currently closed off.

    This is how visitors get into most of the catacombs. There are fifteen or so of these sets of steps to go down, as although the catacombs mostly connect together, you’d never get visitors around them. I suspect that Dylan and Leon would have been able to explore at will though, and there were some catacombs that could only really be visited by short people or tall people willing to crawl.

    Nearly all the access points have metal steps, which have been inserted over the top of older steps, which are mostly quite worn. This part was inaccessible and so there are just the old steps.

    Lots of walkways…..

    This is graffiti that I think dates to the Second World War when these catacombs were used as air raid shelters. I thought initially that it might be relatively tolerable down here, but most of the stone feels damp to the touch, so it couldn’t have been very pleasant.

    The dampness is more evident here.

    This is a blocking stone inserted to, well, block off a burial area. The stone was reused from a Doric frieze.

     

     

     

    There were hundreds of these, stone cut corridors and tombs for someone’s final resting place. Well, not final as it turned out. Although there’s actually no explanation for where the bones are, with the exception of some in the site’s museum. There are explanations that the site has been looted over the centuries, but I can’t imagine the bones were lifted out at that time, so I assume that it’s more recent.

    The surface, with each of those stone hut type things being the entrance into one of the catacombs.

    Each of the catacombs had a sign such as this by it, with the appropriate warnings such as the maximum number of visitors and some height and width restrictions. The site had a few other visitors when I was there, but no real number to mean that I had to wait to enter any of the catacombs. I imagine during the summer months that the wait is rather more tiresome.

    These maps were interesting to see on the surface and they often told visitors what to look for. However, in the larger catacombs it’s difficult to get a sense of where anything is relative to this plan. There are nearly no descriptions downstairs, so I think I missed quite a lot.

    The catacombs are also more extensive than visitors can see, and there are separate, but still part of the same complex, areas which can only be seen with an appointment.

    I’ve seen two explanations given for these circular tables, of which there are several throughout the catacombs. The first is that they are tables where individuals would come for a final meal, as part of the ceremony after burial when the individual was laid to rest. The second is that they were used for an annual Roman ritual of celebrating the dead, but it’s probably the case that both are true.

    I must say though, Malta is a country which is rather pleasant in terms of the temperature. I’d have thought a final meal two metres above in the sun would be more pleasant, but such are the rules of burial rites I suppose…. There are also Christian and Jewish burials at the site, and of course many people were buried here before those two religions were established.

    So, this is a substantial site which it can easily take a couple of hours to explore, with a history dating back thousands of years. It’s full of atmosphere, character and intrigue, so I thought that I’d better check TripAdvisor to see what some visitors thought.

    “We came here half an hour before closing but could not see anything more than a few caves, no Bones.”

    Firstly, I wouldn’t come to a substantial site half an hour before closing, but each to their own. And a few caves? The largest catacombs in Malta with hundreds of metres of pathways? Hmmmmm.

    “Seen one seen them all! Not a through trip but up and down separate stairs to see holes in the ground!”

    Yes, burial sites are so samey…. Although there is some logic to this, many of the burials were quite similar in style. I like though that the site has to get a bad review because it’s simply not possible to link the catacombs together without getting visitors to crawl through them.

    “It costs 5 euros to visit the catacombs that have nothing to offer!”

    No, just thousands of years of history….

    All in, a really interesting experience, but I did have a lot more questions when leaving than answers, so I’d prefer for the interpretation centre to perhaps be a little more involved with details than perhaps it was.