A monument is being built on the roundabout near Malta International Airport within the buffer zone that is meant to protect one of Malta’s most notable early Christian catacombs.
The Ministry for Tourism and Transport Malta are behind the monument, which will commemorate 100 years of aviation in Malta.
A Development Notification Order (DNO) for the works was approved by Mepa on September 25, 2015, two weeks after the application was validated. Contacted by this paper, history of art professor Mario Buhagiar said that buried beneath the roundabout is one of Malta’s “most notable early Christian catacombs” with remarkable rockengravings and a funerary meal rock-cut table.
“Special care must be taken that the proposed monument does not damage or in any way disturb the already compromised archaeological context of the site,” he said. When contacted, Transport Malta said that a number of meetings between the different stakeholders had been held “to ascertain that the works will not in any way impinge negatively on the archaeological remains”.
Following this, the Mepa permit was granted. Moreover, “no excavation was carried out”, it said. The Ħal Resqun catacomb was discovered in 1912 by Temi Zammit. It was later broken into and filled with debris, and Zammit had it cleaned again in 1934.
Assisted by his son Charles George Zammit, he carried out a more detailed survey and a small room was built to protect it. The catacomb was damaged again in 1975 during works outside the old runway, when the room was pulled down and the entrance to the tomb buried beneath a new road.
The Museum Department was not even informed. However, Prof. Buhagiar informed the director, again located the catacomb and had it cleaned once more before having it covered with slabs to seal it off. Then, when the Gudja roundabout was constructed, it was covered without a trace. Letters about the catacombs were exchange in the Times of Malta in October 1978.
Toni Pellegrini, then Director of Information, gave his assurance that it was “safe and sound, inside a traffic island”. Eventually, the precise location was forgotten. In the summer of 2006, the catacomb was rediscovered during roadworks and two years later it was scheduled as class B archaeological remains.
Archaeology professor Anthony Bonnano believes that this catacomb deserves an even higher protection. “The sculptured scenes render it unique and, therefore, it deserves a Class A,” he said. Mepa’s policies state that class B scheduling is applied to remains that are “very important to be preserved at all costs”.
These are protected by a 100-metre buffer zone. “Development in these areas will be limited to activities that are considered essential and do not impinge on the value of the scheduled property,” according to Mepa’s website. Questions sent to Mepa and the Superintendence of Cultural Heritage about what measures, if any, were taken to safeguard these important archaeological remains were unanswered before going to print.