Unfortunately for Cassar, who regularly comes across garbage in heritage sites, this was nothing new. 

It’s not just toilets – people leave everything from entire garbage bags to car remnants in or around these historic sites.

Shocked by the find, she was left flabbergasted that someone would actually go to the trouble of carrying such a heavy item into a catacomb, just to leave it there.

“We really need to begin taking care of our history and heritage before we lose everything,” she said.

These catacombs go back to the Punic-Roman era. The Romans had taken over Malta between 264 to 146 B.C. The catacombs served as a cemetery for the Romans and follows their traditions of being on a high point. It was excavated in 1985.

But in 2021, seeing a ceramic toilet bowl placed in these old structures is not something people should be okay with. And it’s now just literal toilets being dumped in these heritage structures but also all types of leftovers.

“If you love visiting these kinds of places, don’t leave your trash behind. Be responsible and remove your garbage… and it’s not a bad idea to bring a trash bag with you to pick up any other trash you come across and clean up a bit too,” Cassar appealed.

“We’ve lost so many of these catacombs – let’s take care of the ones we have left.”

Have you ever discovered totally out of place trash in historic Maltese sites?