Mdina, Catacombs and Bocci


Monday, March 12, 2018

We began the day with a drive to the hill city of Mdina, the name being the same as the Arabic Medina.  The city was founded by the Romans as Melita, when Malta was conquered by the Arabs, it was renamed Medina, and is now Mdina.  It is in a strategic location:



The Arabs build the staunch fortifications and a giant ditch.  Here’s the gate to the city with the entrance being over the ditch:


 Ultimately the city was taken by the Knights, but the name stayed.  The city was, for a long time, the most prominent city on Malta, and thus the Cathedral of St. Peter and St. Paul s here:



The city is beautiful and very old; at its height during the reign of the Knights, a quarter of the residents were Jews, and the location of the silk market is marked:



The British, not needing the walls as fortifications any longer, converted the space between the walls into beautiful gardens:



There are enormous religious processions through the streets here on Good Friday, and preparations are beginning.  The streets are beautifully decorated; the arch in this picture is wooden and temporary:



Nearby are truly ancient catacombs where St. Peter was imprisoned after his shipwreck on the Maltese coast.  They are enormous and held remains possibly dating back to prehistoric days.



One of the signs explains that, “According to Cicero, the main mourning period followed by the family was nine days long and known as dies feriae.  During this period the family was deemed contaminated but would be purified by rituals focused on a number of funerary meals that culminated in a commemorative meal on the ninth day.”  The body was prepared for burial and lay nearby while the family had these meals on tables like this one:



There were Arabs, Christians and Jews here over the centuries, and we were told the burials were scrambled—there was no “section” for any of the various peoples.  There’s a faint menorah at this site:



Nearby is one of many limestone quarries from which came the blocks used to build Malta to this day.  This quarry has been turned into a museum and restaurant, and there are displays of the techniques used to quarry the stone through the years:



When the quarries are exhausted, a common use, apparently, is for olive or citrus groves:



We had a lovely lunch in the grove, and then tried our hands at limestone carving.  It’s not easy!



Our last stop was at a bocci court, where we learned the game the way it’s played in Malta, which is somewhat different from the Italian one.  We played with teams of three, men versus women, and had lots of laughs:



Tomorrow is Ellin Friedman’s birthday, and Ellin and Bill and Joyce and I went our for a delicious dinner to celebrate.  Tomorrow is our final day!

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