The catacombs of Malta, the ones you can walk into and the ones that need booking

The catacombs are the part of Malta that most surprises people who arrive expecting beaches and knights. Under Rabat lies a city of the dead spanning five centuries, and out in the countryside there are smaller groups almost nobody visits. Here are all the ones you can see, on a timetable or by appointment, and the order I’d see them in.

Why there are so many catacombs under Rabat

The explanation is in the entry Malta submitted to UNESCO in 1998 to put its catacombs on the Tentative List. Most were dug on the outskirts of Melite, the Roman town that’s now Mdina and Rabat and was then the islands’ administrative capital, between the mid-3rd and early 7th centuries. They grew out of an older tradition, the rock-cut tombs of the Phoenician and Hellenistic periods.

What interests me most is another detail in that entry. In the Rabat catacombs Christian, pagan and Jewish rites sit side by side, something the nomination calls rare in the Mediterranean, and the burials are organised by family. The same entry ranks them as the fourth most important early Christian cluster in the Mediterranean, after Italy, Israel and the Maghreb, though that ranking is Malta’s own. It adds that some remained places of devotion until the 17th century, drawing popular pilgrimages from the 12th.

St Paul’s, the one to see

If you only see one set, make it St Paul’s Catacombs. For Heritage Malta they are the oldest and biggest archaeological proof of Christianity on the islands, with over 30 hypogea used until the 7th and 8th centuries. You go in through two large halls whose pillars imitate Doric columns, and two round tables carved from the rock, triclinia that were probably used for commemorative meals for the dead. Around the 13th century part of the site was reused as a Christian shrine with murals.

A. A. Caruana cleared and investigated them in 1894, and they were the first site in Malta to receive the European Heritage Label. Entry is €6, they’re open daily and a visit takes one to two hours. Everything else to see nearby is in Rabat.

St Augustine’s and Abbatija tad-Dejr, next door

St Augustine’s Catacombs lie just metres away from St Paul’s, with a very Maltese story. During the Second World War they became an air-raid shelter, and either side of the door you can still make out a British flag and a swastika, along with the date and time of an alert. Heritage Malta took over the site in 2008 and found it being used to store building materials and asbestos. Inside are five baldacchino tombs. I haven’t found separate opening hours published.

Abbatija tad-Dejr is a group of four early Christian hypogea next to a 13th-century chapel. Heritage Malta treats it as a closed site, visited only by emailed appointment and with its own staff.

Catacombs in the countryside

UNESCO’s entry notes small family catacombs outside Rabat, in the south and the north, that show how rural Malta lived in late Roman times. Three can be visited.

Ta’ Bistra, in Mosta, is the largest group of tombs outside the ancient city. It opens on the last Sunday of each month from 10:00 to 16:00, costs €5 and has a children’s area and parking. Ta’ Mintna, in Mqabba, is three hypogea joined in modern times to serve as a well, with a well-preserved triclinium and decorated tombs. And Salina, in Naxxar, has more than 15 hypogea beside the salt pans the Knights built. Those two are by appointment only.

What isn’t a catacomb

Plenty of people lump in the Ħal Saflieni Hypogeum, and it’s a different thing altogether. It’s a prehistoric underground burial site, in use from around 4000 BC, thousands of years before any Roman catacomb. It’s well worth seeing, but for other reasons. To place each period, the history of Malta will help.

One last note for October. Heritage Malta runs a night inside St Paul’s Catacombs, ‘Castra ad Catacumbas’, from 19:00 on 31 October 2026 to 08:30 on 1 November. With Halloween falling the same night, it’s hard to think of a more fitting way to spend it. For families, the same calendar lists ‘Trick or Treat! The Lost Pig of the Catacombs’ at St Paul’s at 17:00 on 1 November.