We woke this morning with the sun streaming in through our balcony window, to our great joy. It's much better than being in an inner room with a window that looks out only into some kind of a shaft. We did a little dance of joy out onto our balcony, which was a bit of a mistake, as there had been heavy rain in the night and there was a deep puddle on the balcony, which I did not at first notice until my slippers were sopping wet! I took a photo of our lovely view though.
Another drawback with the new room which we encountered this morning was the lack of hot water - the water had been scalding hot in our old room. However, the water is scalding hot tonight, so we are hoping it was just a minor aberration - there was no phone or Internet last night either - so we'll see what it's like tomorrow morning.
We caught a bus into Valletta this morning, then a second bus into Vittoriosa, otherwise known as Birgù. It is a picturesque small walled town opposite Valletta, which has many beautiful ancient houses
as well as a number of places to visit. My sister particularly wanted to visit the church of St Lawrence, but on the way there, we passed the Inquisitor's Palace, so we went there first. The palace was originally built in the 1530s, and was used by the Inquisitors as their official residence from 1574. Today, it focuses partly on Maltese life, such as costume or rural artefacts, or religious culture - like these delightful nativity figurines.
There are are also many relics of the time of the Inquisition, like the dungeons for instance.
We were interested to see the original flooring, even in the piano nobile, of square flagstones. Our guide in the Casa Rocca Piccola yesterday had pointed out one room of original flagstones remaining in that house, saying that other rooms now had more modern and comfortable floors. The guide had also pointed out the original wooden ceiling in the same room yesterday, explaining that, as there were no trees on Malta, only rich people could afford wood, which had to be imported; we noticed today that the Inquisitors had no wooden ceilings.
This is the Chief Inquisitor's bedroom - note the flagstones on the floor and lack of luxuries. The whole building was neither luxurious nor even comfortable.
You can see this reflected in the kitchen.
On my travels, I seem to have photographed a number of kitchens, but never one in which I would have had so little desire to cook - or to wash up, for that matter!
There were interesting displays on life in Malta, as well as some explaining the different social classes in Malta in the early 1900s. Apparently, the working classes spoke Maltese, 'regarded by the higher echelons of society as a vulgar kitchen-tongue' and they tended to be pro-British. The middle classes promoted Malta's cultural connection with Italy and upheld Italian as one of Malta's official languages.
We spent some time looking at the dungeons, which were quite dreary little cells with doors less than 5 feet high; we failed to spot the graffiti which the guide book claimed was there. The much trumpeted torture chamber was just a room with a rope hanging up in it. You were tortured by having you hands tied behind your back and were hauled off the floor by this rope. There was an hourglass to time how long this went on.
After all this, we went to find the church of St Lawrence, which wasn't far away. Unfortunately, it was also shut! We suspect that more things might be open in the summer - or perhaps, those in charge had just gone for an early lunch. We weren't able to hang about to find out though, as we planned to see other things and had to find the Hypogeum before the time on our timed ticket, so we walked back to the bus stop.
Our next bus journey was something of a triumph, as we had to catch a bus to a nearby town called Paola, and a further bus to the next site, that of the Tarxien Temples. This is the largest prehistoric temple site on Malta, though I must say I did not enjoy it nearly as much as the Gganttija temples on Gozo, which we saw on Sunday. I think this was because the Tarxien site had been the subject of a good deal of re-construction, during which somewhat disastrous attempts had been made to save the stones from erosion by covering them with cement. These temples are considered to be a few hundred years younger than the ones we saw on Gozo - these ones were built between 3000 BC and 2500 BC - and some of the more striking finds are now in the Museum of Archeology. This is a replica of a broken female figure which was found on the site, possibly associated with fertility.
There were also replicas of some of the wonderful carved monoliths - a couple of the originals were in my posting for Saturday 23rd. This is one I didn't photograph on that visit.
The purpose of the carving is unknown; it could have been celebrating the lives of the sheep and goats, or just depicting animals for sacrifice.
We had been so efficient in getting to the temples that we had time to stop for some lunch and sit in the sun in the town square before it was time to go off and find the Hypogeum, for which we had timed tickets. The Hypogeum is a labyrinth of underground chambers which were excavated in prehistoric times, and whose exact purpose is not known. It seems to be a temple complex used as a burial site and perhaps a religious centre. Certainly, the remains of over 7000 bodies were found here. What is remarkable about it is that it was dug from the living rock between about 3300 BC and 3000 BC (it is considered to be a little older than the Tarxien site) with tools of flint and bone and was carved so as to represent the architectural features of the temples above ground. There are representations of doorways made from three monoliths and corbelled ceilings, fragments of spiral carvings, and spiral wall paintings. It is a world heritage site, and under considerable threat from visitors, so it is climate controlled and very dark and only 80 people a day are allowed to visit, in groups of 10 at a time. You can see why sometimes you have to apply for tickets two weeks beforehand; we were very lucky to get our tickets at such short notice.
It was a very eerie experience; it was cold and clammy and mostly quite dark. The light flickered, only illuminating features as you approached, and it was silent because the commentary is on the little hand-held device you hold up to your ear. It was not very hard to imagine the fear in the mind of a stone-age person in such a cold dark place - though at least we didn't have to contend with the smell of decomposing bodies as well. And we had wooden walkways and metal handrails, we weren't stumbling about in the dark only illuminated by flickering torches.
No photos are allowed, so this is the best I can do, a photo of a photo.
It shows the chamber known as the 'Holy of Holies', and is carved in some detail. You can see the walks are carved to resemble monoliths. There are traces of red ochre on the walls, so it has been suggested that this was both a burial place and a shrine. Many different items, possibly grave goods or cult items, have been found in these chambers.
After this chilling experience we went back to the bus stop and caught the bus back to Valletta, where we paid our daily coffee-drinking visit to McDonalds to use their free Wi-Fi and I posted yesterday's blog. I'm not sure when I can post this one, I'm not sure it will be convenient to go into Valletta tomorrow. If aren't reading this until the weekend, you'll know why!
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