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Below the floor of the church of San Pawl Milqi, there are the remnants of an excavated Roman Villa. We entered the area via a trapdoor in the floor of the church and descended he ladder on the left. Note the hewn stones of the wall and the carved architectural fragments.
This Roman Villa was built at the end of the 2nd century/1st century B.C. The church that exists today derives from an A.D. 1616 Church that had replaced an earlier fifteenth-century church.
Tradition has associated this place as the Villa of Publius, who was the "chief official of the island" when Paul landed there.
Acts 28:7 There was an estate nearby that belonged to Publius, the chief official of the island. He welcomed us to his home and for three days entertained us hospitably. 8 His father was sick in bed, suffering from fever and dysentery. Paul went in to see him and, after prayer, placed his hands on him and healed him
There is no certain proof that would make this is true, but the Villa was in existence in Paul's day and it is not too far from three bays that have been proposed as where Paul's ship was wrecked: Salina Bay 1 mi. to the northeast, St. Paul's Bay 1 mi. to the northwest, and Mellieha Bay 3.5 mi. to the northwest.
