Having visited this museum, it is something of a surprise that enough people remained sufficiently alive and untortured to maintain the population on the island. In the Mdina dungeons you are treated to various waxwork dummies in poses of extreme duress and agony, re-enacting scenes of some of the pretty hideous tortures that were metered out to people in days gone by, from the Romans up until Napoleon arrived and started trying to calm everybody down and introduce less blood-thirsty forms of judicial retribution.
This is a museum of the old school, which is not necessarily a good thing. It is situated just inside the walls of Mdina, in an eighteenth century palace, which means that the shell of the place looks pretty fine. Inside is a bit of a mixed bag however, a jumble of everything related to the natural world which the curators were able to get their hands on. You walk inside the door to be confronted by a room full of angry looking big cats, very few of whom can claim Maltese descent. Then there's a room full of fish, a bones room, a minerals room (this is very much for the purists), a birds room, a room with carefully sculpted models of Malta's various outlying islands... you probably get the idea.
The Romans came over to Malta in 218BC, and not encountering much resistance and clearly enjoying the climate, they stayed for about 700 years. Despite this, there's not a whole lot of evidence of their sojourn on the island, with the notable exception of this villa in Rabat. Like a lot of the major archaeological discoveries on the island, the villa was accidentally discovered by some nineteenth century folk digging holes in the ground for some completely unrelated purpose. Fortunately, the site was reasonably well preserved, particularly the tiled floor which is in remarkably well-maintained condition and forms the centre-piece of the museum.
The ticket seller gave an audibly fed up sigh when I handed him a €20 to pay for my €6 ticket to the museum. "You don't have six euros?" Sometimes, shopping in Malta with anything larger than a fiver you are made to feel like Richard Pryor in Brewster's Millions as he tries to go shopping with his million dollar bill. Anyway, I was allowed to enter, pockets bulging with small change as I jangled my way inside.
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| The Sleeping Lady |
Malta is home to a number of well-preserved prehistoric sites, like the Gigantija temples in Gozo and the Hypogeum Hal Saflieni in Paola, as well as many others. And so it is no surprise that the Museum of Archaeology in Valletta is well stocked with artefacts from various of these locations.
It's a nice little museum, although 'little' is certainly the operative word. When I visited the upper floor was closed for renovations, and the ground floor does not take too long to navigate. You can wander around and look at the things that long-ago people hacked out of the stone and which have been rediscovered millenia later, and also learn a little bit about some of those ancient sites.
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| inside the Hypogeum |
The Hypogeum in Paola is one place that is definitely worth a visit, whether you've had enough of lying on the beach or you are trying to get in touch with your spiritual side. The Hypogeum is a series of underground chambers connected by low ceilinged passages, which was carved out of the rock over 5,000 years ago, by a pre-historic civilisation about whom little is known. And you don't have to be a history enthusiast to get something from a visit to the Hypogeum. There is something very atmospheric about walking through the narrow passageways accompanied by drip-drip sounds which bounce off the rock walls. The fact that groups are restricted in numbers means that you don't get that over-touristed feel and you can actually take in what you're looking at. No photos allowed inside either, so you have to actually experience the place without the prism of your camera or phone getting in the way. There's no point in me trying to describe it in too much detail though, it's one of those places you need to experience for yourself.
