Children of Empire: Malta

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A January 2010 trip to Malta by michaelhudson

Quote: Malta out-of-season, January 2010. Staying in St Julian's, I travelled by bus to Rabat and Mdina in the west, Attard and Mosta in the centre, and Valletta and the Three Cities in the east. Sometimes it rained, but the sun shone more often.

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Valletta

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My guidebook called Floriana "a quiet little town that feels like a suburb of Valletta" and that was pretty much what it was. There were monuments to dead airmen and independence, a Roman square with stone columns spaced about like stumps in a forest clearing, a cat-feeding station, a boarded up church with Sex room? scrawled on what used to be the window, and a look-out point over a white and beige jumble of houses and church domes and factory chimneys as if someone had managed to squeeze a provincial Italian city together with a Lancashire milltown and the outskirts of Fez.I passed back through the bus station, through the City Gate and into a square straight out of a Disn...Read More

My guidebook called Floriana "a quiet little town that feels like a suburb of Valletta" and that was pretty much what it was. There were monuments to dead airmen and independence, a Roman square with stone columns spaced about like stumps in a forest clearing, a cat-feeding station, a boarded up church with Sex room? scrawled on what used to be the window, and a look-out point over a white and beige jumble of houses and church domes and factory chimneys as if someone had managed to squeeze a provincial Italian city together with a Lancashire milltown and the outskirts of Fez.

I passed back through the bus station, through the City Gate and into a square straight out of a Disneyland Mediterranean village. Porticoed arcades, painted wooden balconies, a Burger King and a craft shop with Clearance Sale, Factory Prices Inside. To the right was the old Opera House, flattened during the last war and left looking like something the Ancient Greeks might have built. To the left were children playing hide and seek behind the tomb at Hastings Gardens, where you could look across a five-a-side pitch built into the battlements and see clear across Sliema to Saint Julian's and the north.

Republic Street is the spine of the city, from City Gate and Freedom Square at one end to Fort St Elmo at the other. It starts unexcitingly, but past St John's Co-Cathedral the sights come thick and fast. Straight on and to the left: the National Library, Manoel Theatre, Grand Master's Palace, St George's Square, the dome of Our Lady of Mount Carmel jostling an Anglican spire for primacy of the sky. To the right: Upper and Lower Barakka Gardens, and the best views of the Grand Harbour. The Auberge de Castille and the Siege Bell Monument, reminding you that not everything here was always so peaceful.

I walked around the high, cool streets of Il-Mandragg, between the fort and the Anglican Cathedral, the closest a city of six thousand gets to an off the beaten track. A car reversed into a narrow parking space, wrecking a perfect shot of an archway. Streetlights were strung to cables down the middle of the road, clothes hung out to dry, a horse-drawn carriage waited for passengers in a square, women swept balconies while their husbands leaned out of first floor windows, talking to the street. You begin to feel that Valletta's even smaller than expected: every second turning leads to somewhere you've been before.

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The Three Cities

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The Three Cities Photo - Vittoriosa, Malta

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When Charles I of Spain invited the Knights of St John to take possession of Malta, Birgu was the place they chose to settle, fortifying an area that swelled to become the Three Cities of Cospicua, Senglea and Vittoriosa, renamed in celebration of the Great Siege of 1565. Traces of the Knights are still visible throughout the Three Cities, though less so in Senglea, which was largely flattened during dive-bombing runs on the nearby dockyards during WWII. For tourist purposes, the Three Cities became the Four Cities in the late-19th century when the British got into the fort building act too, throwing up Fort Rinella to house the state-of-the-art, world's biggest cannon, Armstrong 100-to...Read More

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From Rabat to Attard

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Cross back over Howard Gardens and you're out of Mdina and into Rabat, a small town with only three things worth seeing. On the traffic-spoiled main square is St Paul's Church and Grotto, a large, gloomy place designed in Baroque style and built above a cave where the saint of the same name was supposedly interred for three months in 60AD. Hang around for more than a few minutes and you'll be given a brief guided tour of the church - statue of Saint Paul here, painting of Saint Paul there - before going down to the grotto itself, chisel marks still visible in the ceiling and donation plate by the door. A few hundred metres away, signposted and almost directly opposi...Read More

Cross back over Howard Gardens and you're out of Mdina and into Rabat, a small town with only three things worth seeing. On the traffic-spoiled main square is St Paul's Church and Grotto, a large, gloomy place designed in Baroque style and built above a cave where the saint of the same name was supposedly interred for three months in 60AD. Hang around for more than a few minutes and you'll be given a brief guided tour of the church - statue of Saint Paul here, painting of Saint Paul there - before going down to the grotto itself, chisel marks still visible in the ceiling and donation plate by the door.

A few hundred metres away, signposted and almost directly opposite each other, are the catacombs of Saints Paul and Agatha, underground burial chambers dating from the Byzantine period. It had started to rain and I was sick of paying admission charges, so all I saw of either was the entrance.

It was early and I didn't want to go back to Valletta so I went back to the station downhill from Howard Gardens and took the number 80 bus to Attard instead (get off at the third stop after you enter the village for St Mary's Church and the centre), where the Knights once built their country retreats. From St Mary's I navigated my way to the back entrance of San Anton Palace, the official home of the Maltese president, following signs for Lija and almost continuing straight past the simple green door. The garden was almost the size of Mdina with more workmen than visitors and more stray cats and ducks than both put together. I found myself a deserted bench by one of the many fountains and attempted, unsuccessfully, to shell a hard boiled egg.

There wasn't much to see in Lija or Balzan, the remaining two of the Three Villages. (Truth be told, there wasn't much in Attard either.) More churches, some pretty villas, baroque streets that could have been transported from a corner of Valletta. They're places to break a journey - there wasn't anything here that you couldn't find elsewhere. Read Less

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Hotel Alexandra

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Hotel

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The Hotel Alexandra is an easy place to find, opposite Portomaso Tower - and you can see that from virtually the entire island - and a few dozen metres from the Millennium Church. It's around twenty minutes by bus to Valletta and only a few minutes on foot to the best of Malta's nightlife at Paceville or the casino at the Dragonara Resort.The room - booked via hostelbookers for under £20 a night single occupancy including breakfast - was a genuine bargain. Tiled-floored and pastel-coloured, it was huge and airy, and adequately, if a little datedly, furnished to lower three star standard. There was a TV (no r...Read More

The Hotel Alexandra is an easy place to find, opposite Portomaso Tower - and you can see that from virtually the entire island - and a few dozen metres from the Millennium Church. It's around twenty minutes by bus to Valletta and only a few minutes on foot to the best of Malta's nightlife at Paceville or the casino at the Dragonara Resort.

The room - booked via hostelbookers for under £20 a night single occupancy including breakfast - was a genuine bargain. Tiled-floored and pastel-coloured, it was huge and airy, and adequately, if a little datedly, furnished to lower three star standard. There was a TV (no remote, but you can ask for one at reception, along with irons and hairdryers), a couple of plastic chairs for lounging on the very big balcony - which came with a view of a casino, the sea and the back of the Hilton Hotel - a desk and a couple of moderately-sized single beds. There was air-conditioning, but not enough to stop the room feeling cold at night. Best of all was the seaview from this side of the hotel: perfect for the morning sunrise.

The bathroom had enough space for another ten people, the sink alone for two. There were plenty of towels, free bars of soap and round-the-clock hot water. My only gripe was the shower head, which was set too low on the wall. Overall, it's comfortable without being luxurious, the kind of place where you can sleep well and chill out in the evenings with a couple of beers (there is a bar down at reception too, though out-of-season it didn't look the most enticing of places).

It's worth paying the couple of euro extra for breakfast. No dispiriting bread bun and slice of processed cheese here, but a buffet including a selection of meat and cheese, toast, tea, coffee and fruit juice, three kinds of cereal and a full English breakfast - baked beans, eggs, sausages and bacon - with slabs of cake and hard boiled eggs to finish off.

Opposite the breakfast area is a small (expensive) internet room with a couple of terminals (wi-fi is available free of charge if you have your own laptop). As well as the bar - there's another next door showing live sport on TV - there are also indoor and outdoor splash pools (if you're brave enough, the indoor one is open year round) and a rooftop sun terrace with loungers. The best of the facilities, though, are in the nearby streets: restaurants, bars and shopping, plus a rocky strip literally across the road that juts out into the sea. If you're self-catering, there's a supermarket at the base of Portomaso Tower, Read Less

Member Rating 5 out of 5 on February 5, 2010

Hotel Alexandra
Schreiber Street
Saint Julians, Malta
+356 2135 1151

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The Silent City

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Mdina is Malta's oldest city. Inhabited by Phoenicians, Romans, Arabs and Sicilians, it was the island's capital before the Knights of St John arrived, and remained home to much of its nobility.The first of Malta's citadels remains heavily fortified, enclosed by high walls and entered by one of two gates. The main entrance, Mdina Gate, is by the Howard Gardens bus stop, where all the services from the coast pull in. Immediately through the gate is St Publius Square, the Museum of Natural History and the Mdina Dungeons on the right. Take a left and you'll find yourself among a tight warren of narrow, high-walled streets, opening suddenly into odd-shape...Read More

Mdina is Malta's oldest city. Inhabited by Phoenicians, Romans, Arabs and Sicilians, it was the island's capital before the Knights of St John arrived, and remained home to much of its nobility.

The first of Malta's citadels remains heavily fortified, enclosed by high walls and entered by one of two gates. The main entrance, Mdina Gate, is by the Howard Gardens bus stop, where all the services from the coast pull in. Immediately through the gate is St Publius Square, the Museum of Natural History and the Mdina Dungeons on the right. Take a left and you'll find yourself among a tight warren of narrow, high-walled streets, opening suddenly into odd-shaped squares each with its own cafe or church or museum, all returning eventually to Triq Villegaignon, which runs straight through the centre from St Agatha's Chapel to the rear bastion. Aside from the tourist traps - the Knights of St John Experience, the Mdina Experience - and St Paul's Cathedral (Malta's most important place of worship along with St John's in the capital) there isn't a massive amount to actually see in Mdina: stay any longer than half an hour and you'll end up crossing and re-crossing your steps. St Paul's sits just off the main street, less richly decorated inside than its co-cathedral in Valletta, but worth a visit for the museum across the square (the 2.5 euro admission gets you in to both).

Despite the proclamations of the travel guides, Mdina is no longer traffic free. If the only cars here belong to the 400-or-so residents then there's a striking number of one car, one van families. With such narrow streets, I was constantly forced to duck against walls or into corners. For a while the Silent City was vaguely disappointing - the kind of place you've been primed to like but can't. Then I came to the little square at the rear bastion walls, stood on some steps and found myself looking all the way down the coastline from St Paul's down to Valletta, the dome of Mosta still huge in the foreground. Walking back through the maze of honey-coloured buildings, I stopped for a moment and listened: no engines, just the wind - and my groan of dismay as I stepped in yet another puddle.

There are far worse ways to spend an afternoon. Read Less

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A Sense of the Other

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If Sicily is, as D.H. Lawrence once wrote, an island on the brink - "one hop and you're out of Europe" - then Malta's so close to the edge you barely have room for a sidestep: virtually all of history's major civilisations swept through here, ending with the British, who stayed from the Treaty of Paris in 1814 until independence in 1964 (though the troops remained for another fifteen years, and the influence still lingers).If Sicily had been conquered by the English this is how it might have looked. Red telephone boxes, Mothercare and Next, signs with Today's London newspapers on sale here, English spoken everywhere, British-built cars on the roads that are older than ...Read More

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About the Writer

michaelhudson
Jarrow, Tyne & Wear, United Kingdom

"From call centre wage slave to itinerant English teacher, I've worked in South Korea, Sicily, the Cz..."
46 journals
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