Catacombs And Roman Rooms

We've just come back from Reno's Bar, our favourite bar on the whole of the archipelago.

Conveniently, it's in a backstreet just around the corner from our hostel, off the tourist track and full of lively locals who enjoy conversing with strangers, particularly about football. We found it by chance as we were looking for a shortcut into Sliema rather than having to walk around the peninsula so it was a lucky find. The bar has only been open six weeks and is set inside a confectionary store so you can buy a chocolate bar and a beer at the same time. The owner is a charming bald Nottingham Forest supporter who helped me celebrate my birthday on Wednesday while we also met some of the lads staying in the Hostel in this bar too. They are a mix of Italian, French, Turkish and Libyan, largely here from there to six months to study English. Upon finding out that we were English, they made a beeline straight towards us and we spent a long time chatting to them while sampling all the Maltese beer scene has to offer (which is not much but at least we tried the smooth 5% richness of Cisk Export). It does help that the music selection is quite strong too while knowing about football has helped, particularly as the fortunes of my increasingly impoverished fantasy football team caused much delight.

Saturday was our final full day in Malta so we opted to have a splendid meal in the grubby party district of Paceville. Full of trendy bars and even trendier drongos, this is precisely the area I would avoid if I was back home. However it does have some good restaurants, including the one we went to today, the Gozitian, which served food native to Gozo, the small island 10km to the north of Malta which we visited on Friday. We enjoyed deep fried peppered goats cheese served with almond oil as a starter, followed by a local pasta dish with cheese, snausage and a creamy tomato sauce. The pasta was a little burnt but the flavours were delicious and intense, if not a bit sickly after a while. We then got a dessert on the house - local date pastries called mqaret, served with an almond pâté and ice cream. We also got another delicious Maltese wine, a red this time, all for less than €20 a head. One thing I'll mention about Malta is that I've never been so impressed by the consistent quality of the food we have been having here, not to mention the wine, which may be slightly more expensive than the French or Italian equivalents but is full of depth of flavour.

This morning we opted to go back to Rabat to see a few sights which we did not have time to see during our visit on Tuesday, specifically The Catacombs of Saint Agatha and the St Paul's Catacombs.

The former is an underground chapel hewn in the solid rock on the edge if what was the Roman city of Melita (present day Mdina). It is believed that Saint Agatha hid in these caves in around 250AD to escape the persecution from the Emperor Decius and the Governor of Sicily, Quintainius, who had fallen in love with her. In the end she went back to Sicily and upon refusal to renounce her Christian faith, her breasts were cut off with sheers before she was beheaded on 5 February 251AD. Many pictures of her see her holding a pair of breasts on a platter to symbolize her martyrdom.

Anyway, I digress. This crypt was kept in her honour, turned into a small chapel, and frescos were painted in the underground chamber as early as the 12th century. The main frescos which still survive though were painted in 1480 but it's still remarkable that in these conditions that such detail has survived for so long. Many of the frescos were of saints while one has been ruined as someone put a window through the wall, I believe to stop well water from damaging the rest of the frescos. We went on this tour with a charming Maltese guide, an elderly gent who was enthused by the history, and two old German ladies with dodgy hips. The uneven floor did not help them at all.

Beyond the main alter lie the eerie catacombs, tombs which were dug deep into the limestone. There were many small ones here for infants as the mortality rate of the young was so high. The catacombs extend over 4100 square meters and are from the second and third centuries AD. There were many different types of grave here, dependent in age and status, but all had a little pillow upon which the deceased, after they had been embalmed in oil and spices, could rest their heads after being wrapped up in a sheet. The presence of bones in situ added to the sense of eeriness while the dim lighting to replicate that of oil lamps didn't help either. The presence of table outlines in the vaults of the catacombs, where the funeral feasts took place, did highlight these places were more places of celebration rather than mourning while it was wondrous to spot two graves embellished with frescos from the fourth century which miraculously still survive.

The museum associated with this was a weird assortment of bric-a-brac but the Roman pottery, old Maltese currencies through the years and the fifteenth century tomb inscriptions were all rather interesting.

After this we headed over to the St Paul's Catacombs, which we could enter for free with our superb value Heritage Malta pass (at present, we paid €35 each to get into €68 of attractions had we bought the tickets individually. The St Paul's Catacombs are near the church of the same name, pretty much across the road from St Agatha's. these are taller and more impressive, grandiose even, yet contain many of the same features and burial methods. Again, it was just outside the ancient town of Melite and is a hypogea with Christian, Jewish and Pagan graves. It started as a small hypogeum which was enlarged as necessary to cover over 200 square meters. A chapel may have been here in the 13th century but it contains examples of reclining feast tables, a feature of Palaeochristian burnish rituals in Malta. In the darkness it's a warren of tombs branching off from a main atrium which is marked by an edifice not dissimilar to a Victorian public toilet. Going down the stairs and into the semi darkness is quite scary but the eyes soon adjust and it's remarkable observing all of these old tombs packed so closely together. On a few, you can still see the inscriptions bearing the names and achievements of the deceased, not to mention their religious beliefs.

Feeling a little peckish, we opted to go to a traditional Maltese bakery at the heart of Rabat, where we bought gaghh tal-ghasel, honey rings with a chocolate sponge filling. These were quite delicious but exceptionally stodgy and filling, so much so that we struggled to finish them as we walked through the charming narrow streets of the town and up to the fortress of Mdina, where we had a date with a Roman villa.

The Domvs Romana is a Roman townhouse sat flush against the walls of the old fortress. Discovered in 1881 during the Victorian's love of planting gardens, some stunning floor mosaics were quickly unearthed, many of which were largely intact. A Roman style villa, housing a new museum, was quickly constructed above the mosaics to preserve them while the exhibit explains a great deal about life in the familial home of a high-ranking Roman. A couple of statues were also discovered, including an almost complete one of the Emperor Claudius, which is also on display. It was great to be so close to this piece of history which has survived 2000 years. There is also a rare example of an early Corinthian column and some decorated patterned cornising, which was so finely detailed so as to be breathtaking. The mosaic floor, showing the popular image of two doves sat atop the rim of a bowl, was undoubtedly the highlight though and seeing the original in its almost full form, situated in a reconstructed version of the house which once stood there, gave an incredible perspective into roman life. Equally fascinating was the cheap way the owner tried to mend the mosaics a few centuries later when wealth must have been in decline.

There were also a few common emblema discovered too, one of a boy holding a bunch of grapes in one hand and a pomegranate in the other, a representation of autumn. In another, a nude satyr was held fast by two women. Finally, the site was later used as a burial place when the Arabs were in Malta and there was a small exhibition on this discovery too. In the garden were planted some important trees of that era, including the Seville orange tree.

With a morning of museums completed in Rabat, we opted to travel the 33 minutes by bus to Valletta, where we aimed to see a couple more exhibits before they closed at 5pm. I'll detail these in my next post.