St Augustine’s Catacombs

A visit to St Paul’s Catacombs will surely whet your appetite for further underground exploring, and St Augustine’s Catacombs provide you with that opportunity – being located just a few metres away, their door marked by a plaque bearing the words ‘Ad Catacumbas’.   St Augustine’s Catacombs, named after the Augustinian friars who owned the land, originally formed part of the vast cemetery that sprawled outside Melite’s walls. Today’s entrance leads to a set of three small hypogea which feature a number of baldacchino tombs and triclinia.   These catacombs were also used as a shelter during WWII , but the story of the site after World War II is unclear. Inscriptions do appear on the walls of the entrance chamber, among which a Union Jack and a swastika inscribed on either side of the door, as well as the time and date of an air raid warning. The story of the site after World War II is unclear.   In 2008 Heritage Malta took possession of the site and discovered that the catacomb