Valletta

Valletta exists because of a siege. In 1530 the Order of St John, a military and religious order driven from Rhodes by the Ottomans, took over Malta from the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V. The Knights based themselves in the harbour town of Birgu, across the Grand Harbour from today’s Valletta. In the spring of 1565 an Ottoman fleet and an army of tens of thousands arrived to take the island. The Great Siege lasted from May to early September. Fort St Elmo, at the tip of the peninsula where Valletta now stands, fell after about a month, and its defenders were killed almost to a man. The rest of the Knights, a few thousand soldiers and the Maltese population held out until a relief force from Sicily arrived in September.

The Order’s Grand Master, Jean de Valette, decided that the next attack must find a city that could not fall. The pope and the kings of Catholic Europe sent money. On 28 March 1566 Valette laid the foundation stone of a new fortified town on the empty Xiberras peninsula, and the Italian military engineer Francesco Laparelli drew up a grid. The Maltese architect Girolamo Cassar then designed and built many of its main buildings, including St John’s and the Grandmaster’s Palace. The town was largely finished within about five years, which is very fast for a city with stone walls this thick. The Knights moved in around 1571, and Valletta became the capital.

The Order ruled Malta until 1798, when Napoleon’s fleet stopped on its way to Egypt and took the island almost without a fight. The French were unpopular, closing convents and taking church silver, and the Maltese rose against them within months. With British help the French garrison surrendered in 1800, and Malta became a British possession, later a Crown Colony. For 164 years Valletta was the base of the Royal Navy in the central Mediterranean, and many of its buildings and street names date from that time.

The second siege came in the Second World War. Malta lay between Italy and North Africa, so it was bombed heavily from 1940 to 1942, and convoys of food and fuel had to fight their way in. In April 1942 King George VI awarded the whole island the George Cross for its endurance. Independence followed in 1964, a republic in 1974, EU membership in 2004 and the euro in 2008. Valletta was listed by UNESCO in 1980 and was a European Capital of Culture in 2018. Today about 5,000 people live inside the walls, and about half a million live on the island.

Valletta is small enough to read from a map. The city sits on a tongue of rock, about a kilometre long and 600 metres wide, with the Grand Harbour on the east and Marsamxett Harbour on the west. Republic Street runs along the spine from the modern City Gate at the landward end to Fort St Elmo at the tip. Nearly every other street is a straight cross street that drops steeply to the water, and many of those are stepped. That is why suitcases and strollers are a bad idea here, and why a taxi that stops at the corner is doing its best.

Laparelli’s grid was drawn with defence in mind. The wide bastions on the landward side were cut into a deep dry ditch, and a second line of walls was added outside them in the 1630s to protect the approach. The suburb that grew behind that outer line is named after its engineer, Pietro Paolo Floriani: Floriana. The ditch and the walls remain, and you cross them at City Gate, which was rebuilt with a new parliament and an open-air theatre by the architect Renzo Piano between 2011 and 2015. The theatre stands on the ruins of the Royal Opera House, which was bombed in 1942 and never rebuilt as a roofed hall.

The Knights also planned Valletta for comfort. The streets were laid out so that breezes from both harbours would run through them, and each langue, or national group of the Order, built its own inn, or auberge, near the walls. The Auberge de Castille, now the Prime Minister’s office, is the grandest. Several other auberges are now museums or offices. Strait Street, a narrow lane parallel to Republic Street, was known in the twentieth century as a place where sailors drank; it now has small wine bars and music venues.

Practical tips follow from the plan. Do the long, level walk along Republic Street, and use the Upper Barrakka Gardens as a viewpoint. The Barrakka Lift connects the garden to the harbour level, so you can take the ferry to the Three Cities without climbing. The bus terminus lies just outside the gate, and the ferry landings are below the walls on both harbours. Start at the gate and walk to the fort in the morning, when the street is cool and mostly empty, and come back along a side street for shade.

The Knights’ buildings look severe from the street: plain limestone walls, small windows and wooden balconies. The richness is kept inside, and nowhere more than St John’s Co-Cathedral. Girolamo Cassar built it in the 1570s as the church of the Order, with a fortress-like façade. In the seventeenth century the Order’s wealthy langues covered the interior with carved stone, gilding and marble. The Calabrian painter Mattia Preti, who arrived in 1660 and lived in Malta until his death in 1699, painted the barrel vault with scenes from the life of St John the Baptist and designed the carved stone decoration of the walls in the style of high baroque.

The floor is a second work of art. It is made of about 400 inlaid marble tomb slabs of Knights, decorated with skeletons, coats of arms and symbols of mortality, and visitors walk over them along a marked path. The eight side chapels belong to the langues of the Order, and each is decorated according to its nation’s taste. The cathedral’s treasure is the Oratory, where Caravaggio’s Beheading of St John the Baptist hangs. Painted in 1608, it is the artist’s largest canvas and the only one he signed, in the blood flowing from the saint’s neck. Caravaggio had fled Rome after a killing, was made a Knight of Malta, and was then imprisoned and expelled from the Order after a fight. He escaped to Sicily within months.

Not everything is baroque. The Grandmaster’s Palace, built from 1571, holds frescoes of the Great Siege, tapestries and one of Europe’s big collections of armour. Casa Rocca Piccola shows how a noble family lived in a sixteenth-century house. The Manoel Theatre of 1731, named for Grand Master Manoel de Vilhena, is among the oldest working theatres in Europe. The British added an Anglican church with a tall spire in 1844 and the Royal Opera House in 1866, and the Italian-style Our Lady of Mount Carmel dome is a landmark on the skyline.

A good approach is to go first to St John’s at opening, before the tour groups arrive, and then to a quiet interior such as Casa Rocca Piccola or the Manoel Theatre while the queues build. Dress modestly: shoulders and knees covered, no flash, and quiet voices. The interior is more rewarding if you read a little first about the Knights and their langues, and if you look up as often as you look down.

In June 1940 Italy entered the war, and Malta, a British naval base a few minutes’ flight from Sicily, was suddenly on the front line. The island was bombed on the first day and for most of the next two years. Historians cite over 3,000 air raids, and the Grand Harbour and the Three Cities took the worst of it. Valletta lost its opera house, part of its main street and many old buildings. Ordinary people sheltered in caves, tunnels and the rock-cut shelters that had been dug into the limestone, and families slept in them for months.

The island depended on supplies from Britain, and each convoy across the Mediterranean was under attack. By 1942 food, fuel and ammunition were running short. The convoy called Operation Pedestal reached the Grand Harbour in mid-August 1942 with five of fourteen merchant ships, including the tanker Ohio, which was towed in. It arrived on the feast of Santa Marija, 15 August, a date that is still a public holiday. The convoy saved the island’s fuel supply, and Malta could keep its aircraft and submarines in action. In April 1942 King George VI had awarded the island the George Cross, which is now on the Maltese flag.

Below the Upper Barrakka Gardens, tunnels were cut into the rock to house the command centre from which Royal Navy, Army and Air Force commanders directed the defence. This is the Lascaris War Rooms; the same rooms were used in 1943 to plan the Allied landings in Sicily. The National War Museum in Fort St Elmo displays aircraft parts, the cars and uniforms of the period, and the original George Cross. The fort itself carries bullet marks and bomb damage from two sieges 377 years apart.

The war also shaped daily life. Ration books, black-out curtains and the sound of sirens are part of family memory, and many older Maltese still call the air-raid shelters by their nicknames. It is worth reading a little before you visit, because the museums assume some background. If you visit only one, choose the War Museum for the objects and the Lascaris War Rooms for the atmosphere of a working command post.

Maltese food is an island cuisine shaped by Sicily, North Africa, the Knights’ kitchens and British habits. The most common snack is the pastizz, a flaky diamond-shaped pastry filled with ricotta or mushy peas, sold hot from counters for about a euro. Eaten at 08:00 with a small coffee or a glass of tea, it is the local breakfast. Beside it stand the qassata, a round savoury pie, and imqaret, deep-fried date pastries sold from kiosks and market stalls.

Bread is central. The ftira is a ring-shaped loaf that can be split and filled with tuna, tomato, capers and olives, and the ħobż biż-żejt is bread rubbed with ripe tomato and oil. Sheep and goat cheeses called ġbejniet are eaten fresh or dried, often with peppercorns. Soups, especially the thick vegetable minestra, are winter food. The national dish is stuffat tal-fenek, rabbit stewed in wine and garlic, often served with spaghetti as a first course and the rabbit as a second course; the meal is called a fenkata and is a Sunday tradition in villages.

Fish follows the season. Lampuki, or dolphinfish, is caught from late summer through autumn and is baked in a pie or fried with tomato sauce. Bragioli are stuffed beef olives, timpana is baked macaroni in pastry, and bread pudding and figolla, an Easter almond cake, are among the sweets. In the harbour towns you can eat grilled fish by weight, so ask the total price before you order.

On the drinks list, Cisk is the local lager, brewed since the late 1920s, and Kinnie is a bitter-orange soft drink from the early 1950s that Maltese people drink as often as cola. The islands also produce wine from local grapes, including Ġellewża and Girgentina, from producers such as Marsovin and Delicata, and a sweet liqueur called bajtra from prickly pears. Cafés sell good coffee, often with milk in the Italian style. Tap water is safe but comes from desalination plants and tastes flat, so most visitors drink bottled water.

Practical rules help. Lunch is at midday to 14:30 and dinner starts at 19:00, and small restaurants close in between. Check menus for the price of fish by weight and for cover charges, and ask what is fresh that day. Tipping about 5 to 10% is normal in restaurants if service is not on the bill. Vegetarians manage easily with cheese pastizzi, salads and pasta, while vegans need to ask about cheese and stock.

Maltese and English are both official languages, and nearly everyone you meet switches between them without thinking. Maltese is the only Semitic language written in the Latin alphabet, and it descends from the Arabic spoken in Sicily and Malta in the Middle Ages, with many Italian, Sicilian and English words added over centuries. You will see it on signs, and some letters, such as ħ, ġ, ċ and ż, are unfamiliar; a few words such as grazzi, bonġu and saħħa are enough to be polite.

The rhythm of life follows the Catholic calendar. Most people are baptised in the Catholic Church, and each parish holds a festa, a summer feast for its patron saint, with brass bands, processions, street decorations and fireworks that can run late into the night. In Valletta the big feast is St Paul’s Shipwreck on 10 February, a public holiday. Holy Week has processions with statues on Good Friday. Sunday is quiet: many small shops and some sights close, and families eat a long lunch. The country has 14 public holidays, so check the date before you plan.

The island is small and social. A friend or a cousin can often help, and shop staff will chat while they serve you. Traffic is heavy and drivers are impatient, so cross at marked places and look right first, as traffic drives on the left, a British habit. The bus network is the main way to get around, and the yellow buses of the old fleet have been replaced by modern ones. Ferries link Valletta to Sliema and the Three Cities, and many people commute by boat.

The best way to fit in is to eat at the local times, dress modestly in churches, and be patient with slow service. Malta is a small country that relies on visitors, and locals will usually tell you which counter is good and which is for tourists. If you want to see the daily life of Valletta, walk Republic Street at 08:00, when workers are buying pastizzi, and again at 19:00, when the town returns to its residents. Both are quieter than the middle of the day.