MUSEUM OF ARCHAEOLOGY - GOZO
The Museum of Archaeology is located within the walls of the Citadel, just behind the Old Gate. It is housed in a 17th century building which originally served as a Town Hall where the Knights of St. John would receive their distinguished visitors. At one time it was the residence of the Bondi' family, but for some reason or another it was abandoned and suffered a lot of damage. It was thanks to Sir Harry Luke, then Lieutenant Governor of Malta, that this Spanish-style Renaissance town house was restored in 1937. In May 1960 it was inaugurated as the first public museum of Gozo, incorporating within its exhibits both the archaeological and the ethnographic aspects of the island. In 1986 it was redesigned and reopened as the Archaeology Museum of Gozo.
The museum illustrates the cultural history of the island of Gozo from prehistoric times up to the early modern period. The exhibits come from various archaeological sites and are arranged to give the visitor a chronological overview.
The ground floor is devoted to the Neolithic Period, the Temple Period and the Bronze Age (5200 B.C. - 700 B.C.). The first room houses a selection of decorated potsherds, pottery vessels, stone/bone implements and pendants from various settlements and tombs, mainly from Xagħra. Worthy of note are the obsidian, flint and red ochre lumps, which are all of foreign origin. In the second room one finds relics from the Ġgantija Temples with the main items being a slab with a carved relief of a snake, a stone phallic symbol, some stonerollers and plaster casts of two stone heads. A model of the Ġgantija Temples together with copies of Charles Brockdorff paintings help the visitor to bring the extraordinary and megalithic structure to life. One can also make use of the multimedia available in order to see a complete reconstruction of the edifice. The third room is dedicated to the Bronze Age. Of special interest are a group of miniature vessels and a decorated double pot, all found in Victoria. Some fragmented clay anchors were found in a silo pit on top of Nuffara hill.
The upper floor is devoted to the historical Phoenician, Roman, Medieval and Renaissance/ Order of St. John Periods. The collection includes jewellry, coins, marble statues, oil lamps and part a of large limestone olive-piper. A selection of funerary objects includes urns of different material and shapes found in several rock-cut tombs throughout the island. A particular urn consists of a glass bottle still containing cremated human remains found in Vajringa Street, Victoria. The material found under the sea is displayed in the Xlendi Room, named after the deceptively innocuous bay where two merchant ships sank. Wine jars, amphorae, lead anchors and other pottery material were recovered in 1961. Among a series of commemorative inscriptions are those that record Bernardo De Opuo as a hero during the 1551 siege, the status of Rabat as a Municipium, the construction of a road in 1623 and the erection of Gourgion Tower in 1690. A Punic inscription on a marble slab (2nd. Century B.C.) commemorates the building and restoration of sanctuaries to various Punic divinities, including one to the goddess Asthart. But perhaps the most notable inscription is that of Majmuna's marble tombstone. The inscription in Cufic Arabic (early Arabic) laments the death of a young Muslim girl at the age of 12 years. Another masterpiece is a marble statue of high quality representing a she-wolf suckling the legendary twins Romulus and Remus found at Fontana (c. 1720).