The restored Domus Romana - an appreciation

The inauguration of the revamped Domus Romana Museum in Rabat, which was prominently reported last Sunday, deserves the publicity it has meritoriously received. The conservation and restoration exercise coupled with the state of the art display does credit to Heritage Malta and to all those involved in the project.

The Roman town house in much the same manner as the Hal Saflieni Hypogeum, whose restoration was completed a few years back, by the then Museums Department, give Malta's unique historical and cultural heritage some of the prestige it so richly deserves and fills us all with justifiable pride.

Together with Fondazzjoni Patrimonju Malti, Heritage Malta is in a quiet, unobtrusive way, enhancing Malta's European credentials. There is still a great deal to achieve and to ask ahead is fraught with challenges some of which are truly formidable, but an achievement like that of the Domus Romana fills us with optimism.

We now look forward to the inauguration of Palazzo Falson (popularly but erroneously known as the Norman House) in Mdina, which Fondazzjoni Patrimonju Malti is undertaking with tenacious determination to be as scientifically correct using as much as possible state-of-the-art restoration techniques.

Patrimonju's track record of a perfectionist approach in the brilliant series of exhibitions it has regaled the Maltese public with over the past decade leaves us in little doubt that the Norman House will join the Domus Romana and the Hal Saflieni Hypogeum as a third national showpiece.

The Domus Romana richly deserves the loving care and meticulous attention it has received. Obviously the residence of an affluent Roman gentleman, it gives us the best insight to the gracious living and cultured sophistication that characterised aspects of the city of Melite whose boundaries included most of present day Rabat.

Diodorus Siculus (v, 12, 1-14), who wrote between c. 60 and 30 B.C. remarked (v,12, 1-14) that the houses were "fine and decorated with carved cornices and works in stucco" and that the "people excelled in several arts."

An element of connoisseurship is provided by the case of another Diodorus, a Maltese friend of the famous orator Cicero (Verr. Ii, iv, 36-42) who had a collection of silverware which included several cups by Mentor, the famous Greek silversmith whose work was held in such great esteem that two skyphoi by him had cost the elder Pliny 100,000 sestertii (NH, 147).

The scarcity of remains of monumental public buildings is probably due, as Professor Anthony Bonanno has perceptively remarked, to a ruthless rebuilding.1 In addition, some of the more impressive archaeological finds have been treated with negligible respect. Up to the late 19th century imposing architectural remains could be seen in the streets of Mdina.2

A.A. Caruana lamented that "many of these relics have been appropriated in private houses, but the greater number have been destroyed even recently."3

By 1888, he had succeeded in convincing the authorities to collect what remained in a museum of Roman Antiquities which he had set up above the ruins of a wealthy domus that had just been excavated at Rabat.4 This was the start of the Domus Romana as a public museum.

The find of the domus in February 1881, on the Saqqajja esplanade was immediately recognised as one of exceptional interest. Its mosaic pavements are considered among the finest in the Hellenistic world,5 and they probably constitute the most important artistic legacy of the Roman period in Malta.

In them the two techniques known as opus tesselatum and opus vermiculatum were sensitively blended by fine craftsmen to create a pleasing optic effect.6 Everything in the house suggests wealth, good taste and gracious living, and the wealthy proprietor must have enjoyed a degree of local importance.

Archaeological and artistic considerations suggest a date around the first decades of the first century B.C.,7 but the building had a very long life span which extended into the early Christian period. Its most striking architectural feature was a peristyle with 16 Doric columns of Maltese limestone which carried an elegant entablature.

A rendering of stucco enhanced the general effect and there is the possibility of a glass roof.8 Finds included a fragment of a white marble inscription with the letters DECVR that possibly contained the name of a decurion.

The house may have been provided with baths that were fed by the water conduits from the tepid and brackish water of Ghajn Hamman, few metres away to the NE This spring supplied other baths in the neighbourhood like the one investigated in the early 17th century by the historian and antiquarian G.F. Abela which produced a polychrome mosaic floor.9 Another bath discovered in Mdina in 1720 had two furnace rooms and a lead basin weighing 150 libre.10

There was an important sequel to the history of the domus when a Muslim cemetery was built above its ruins in the late 11th and early 12th centuries. Some of the built tombs carried inscriptions carved on prismatic stelae that were mostly in the ornate Kufuc script.

The conservation exercise has given the cemetery the importance it deserves. A number the tombs built of sawn stones (a technique that was apparently new to Malta) have been restored and the burial site turned into an attractive archaeological park that can be admired from a terrace accessed from the peristyle area of the house.

A reproduction of a typical tomb and a selection of headstones greet the visitor at the entrance to the exhibition. The Muslim element is in this way given the importance that is its due in the moulding of the Maltese National identity.

Once again, well done and thank you to all those involved in the project which we are assured is an ongoing one. The archaeological investigation of the cemetery has, for example, still to be completed and some captions need to fine tuned but the over effect is one that does Malta proud.

References

1. A. Bonanno. "The Maltese Artistic Heritage of the Roman Period", Proceedings of History Week 1984, The Historical Society (Malta 1986), 7.

2. G.F. Abela, Della Descrittione di Malta Malta 1647, 32, J.Houel, Voyage Pittoresque ...,(Paris 1787), iv, 113, O. Bres, Malta Antica Illustrata ... (Rome 1816), 350.

3. A.A. Caruana, Report on the Phoenician and Roman Antiquities... (Malta, 1882), 92.

4. P.P. Castagna, Lis Storia ta' Malta... 2nd ed. (Malta 1888), I, 76.

5. E. Pernice, Die Hellenistiche Kunst in Pompeiji, iv, Pavimente und Figürliche Mosaiken (Berlin, 1938), 6-2, 125-128,141,160,165).

6. For recent accounts and appreciations of the mosaics: T. Gouder, "The Mosaics in the Museum of Roman A74ntiquities...", Heritage, ii, 514-527, and A. Bonanno, Roman Malta... (Malta 1992), 21-22.

7. A. Bonanno, "The Maltese Artstic Heritage", op.cit., 9.

8. T. Ashby, "Roman Malta", Journal of Roman Studies. V, (1915) 35.

9. G. F. Abela, 33.

10 .G.A. Ciantar, Malta Illustrata...., I, (Malta 1772), 150.