The Roman Domus, so far, boasts the most important architectural remain dating to the Roman Period in Malta. Discovered by accident in 1881 while some trees were being planted, it is the only Roman townhouse to have been excavated from the old capital city Melitae (Mdina as it was known at the time). Dating back to the 1st century before Christ it is thus placed within the Republic period of the Roman history.
Unfortunately very little structural remains have been unearthed; this however, does not mean that archaeologists cannot give a very good guess to how this house looked. The layout of the beautiful mosaics showing popular motifs such as doves drinking from a bowl and various other features, such as fragments of the walls showing painted images of columns and greenery and columns crafted in a Helenistic Doric order, have helped in building an accurate image of this very aristocratic townhouse.
Proof of the high status of its owners lie also in the elegantly executed marble statuary discovered; it was rare indeed to find statues of the Imperial family more specifically Claudius and his daughter Claudia Antonia with a third statue showing a young boy possibly impersonating the infamous Nero, adopted son of Claudius in a domestic setting unless the owner had an official administrative role.
Of note amongst the remains discovered in this house are a series of artefacts that give us a picture of the beauty regime of the inhabitants of the house. These include delicately crafted bone hair pins many of them topped with a miniature female head sporting an elaborate hairstyle, some gold jewellery including earrings and rings, a strigil used to scrape off dirt from the body after having been oiled and a good number of small glass perfume bottles. A fine array of pottery ware of the terra sigillata type and other kitchen paraphernalia made from glass and bone and ranging from plates to bowls to cups to utensils proof the existence of a busy kitchen that had to cater not only for the whole household but also for the numerous guests. Other remains exhibited here worth mentioning are: a large draped marble female figure representing either the goddess Ashtart or Isis that used to stand just inside the walls of Mdina, medium sized intricate framed mosaics showing mythological figures and allegorical motifs, a baby rattle sculpted out of bone, a series of terracotta masks, bone hinges, numerous oil lamps, terracotta amphorae at the time used not only as a container but also as a floor insulating system and coins minted in Roman Malta.
Further excavations between 1920 and 1925 by Sir Temi Zammit, the most famous and prolific archaeologist of the island, showed that this house was much bigger than the remains indicate and that within that same road more Roman townhouses must have existed. Due to the changing size of the city of Mdina this house is nowadays in the Rabat area, originally however it was located well within the city walls. During excavations a number of gravestones and skeletal remains emerged from on top of the layers belonging to the Roman period. The orientation of the burials and the Kufic inscriptions on the tomb stones revealed a Muslim cemetery in use during the Arab period of the islands.
The current building which houses these remains was built between 1881 and 1882 and was constructed purposely to protect the mosaics and archaeological remains discovered here. It was opened to the public in February 1882 as a Museum of Roman Antiquities and many of the Roman artefacts discovered in the area where, some of them still are, exhibited here. So far this now historic building still houses the largest collection of Roman remains visible to the public.
