TINY ISLAND IS BIG ON HISTORY
Malta greatly rewards a longer stay
A strategic location can be more curse than blessing. Just ask the Maltese, whose tiny island nation lies 80 kilometres below Sicily. Early in the Second World War, when Malta was a British possession, Germany and Italy bombed it almost daily.
And centuries earlier it was the site of the Great Siege of 1565, a devastating, yet ultimately unsuccessful, step by the Ottoman Turks toward conquering all of western Europe.
For travellers today, Malta’s proximity to Europe’s glamour destinations is a definite plus — if not a widely appreciated one.
Often experienced as a day stop on Mediterranean cruises, Malta greatly rewards a longer stay.
The 27-by-12.5-kilometre island is packed with lovingly restored sites that bring history to life, as my wife and I discovered in mid-May in what served as a perfect four-day prelude to a Venice visit.
Beyond its history, Malta’s landscape offers a natural, if hauntingly monochrome, beauty amid the brilliant blues of the surrounding sea and sky. Greenery is sparse.
And from rows of city buildings to its ubiquitous walls, which replace fences and hedges as property boundaries, nearly every structure is coloured with the ochre of the soft limestone that underlies the surface of the island. Its people, though, are eager to show what Malta has contributed to world events as well as its hospitality.
That includes a seafood-based cuisine that blends influences from Italy, Spain and Morocco, among other places, as befits a cultural crossroads.
And with English being an official language, along with Maltese, the country is especially attractive to North Americans.
We spent our time there with a Utah couple planning to visit Barcelona next, as well as a Pittsburghbased couple who make Malta their second home. The Pennsylvanians were eager to lead us in touring — a godsend, as Malta can be hard to explore on one’s own.
For visitors, the idea of taking the wheel is daunting; roads are narrow and lined with limestone walls.
Plus, drivers in this sundrenched, densely populated country of about 440,000 are known for a somewhat cavalier attitude. Asked which side of the road Maltese drive on (Britain’s left-side approach is the rule) one local answers, “the shady side.”
It is worth it to arrange in advance for a private guide, although buses do make circuits to the many tourist attractions around the island.
Because history is a major draw for our group — we’ve all read up on the Great Siege, for instance — our first stop is Valletta, the compact, walkable capital overlooking Malta’s magnificent Grand Harbour.
Several small peninsulas are spread before us, each crowned with a fortress much like what the attacking Ottomans must have seen.
But on this day, the 16th century would have to wait. By a steep stone stairway we descend to the Lascaris War Rooms, which preserve a command centre and connected network of tunnels built during the Second World War to provide security from air attacks.
In a Mediterranean Sea that Italian dictator Benito Mussolini tried to transform into “an Italian lake,” Malta had “the only harbour available to the British between Gibraltar and Alexandria, Egypt,” says military historian Rick Atkinson.
That made it “the most bombed place on Earth in the early 1940s, with some 16,000 tons of Axis bombs dropped” over Malta’s fewer than 259 square kilometres.
“The Maltese,” Atkinson adds, “showed remarkable fortitude, given the thousands of casualties suffered and the enormous privation imposed on them by the war.”
Bernard Cachia Zammit, our war-room docent, proudly elaborates on that perseverance while pointing to a large wall board with expected arrival times of Sicily-based Axis bombers, just 20 minutes away — and noting the Allied fighter squadrons pursuing them.
Much of the 1943 Allied invasion of Sicily also was planned here.
Climbing back to Valletta’s streets, we then make the 15-minute walk to Fort St. Elmo, which the Turks seized briefly during the Great Siege.
The fort’s museum describes the nobles of the multinational Sovereign Order of St. John of Jerusalem, Knights Hospitaller, who along with the Maltese people helped repel the invaders. The knights, who date back to the Crusades, were given Malta as their home by the church in return for a nominal annual fee: a single Malta-trained hunting falcon. (The jewel-encrusted black bird of movie fame? It was created by mystery writer Dashiell Hammett.)
Next comes St. John’s Co-Cathedral, the plain limestone exterior of which opens into a glorious gilded sanctuary. Like Valletta itself, this gem was built by the knights in the late 1500s as the island sought to refortify itself after the siege’s destruction. Among the cathedral’s treasures: two stunning works by the realist painter Caravaggio, who lived in Malta in the early 1600s, including his largest work, The Beheading of John the Baptist.
Lunch at Triq il-Merkanti’s busy outdoor street market gives us a chance to sample Malta’s own diamond-shaped ricotta pastry dish — pastizzi — with a glass of Cisk, its lovely light-coloured beer.
Then it’s on to the massive Renzo Piano-designed City Gate project, still under construction. The project is part of a complex with Piano’s new parliament building and open-air theatre that will replace an opera house destroyed in the Second World War.
Controversy over its modern style seems to be waning as the Maltese gear up for their country’s turn as the European Union’s designated European Capital of Culture next year.
Our group stays in the fishing town of Marsaxlokk, just southeast of Valletta, where we have rented an apartment. Its harbour teems with brightly painted boats, which draw the eye from the ochre buildings on the shore. Its dockside crafts market displays many items bearing the eight-pointed Maltese cross.
Like many Maltese restaurants, Ferretti, our choice this evening, has a historic setting: It occupies an 18th-century battery surrounded by a moat, from which the harbour view is spectacular.
We feast on local grouper, stone fish and sea bream, offered whole and split among the diners. Offerings from the local Marsovin winery prove popular.
The next day’s scenic drive along Malta’s southwestern coast takes us to a place we’re unprepared for — since we’re still thinking of 1565 as pretty long ago. Malta has unearthed and reconstructed two elaborate prehistoric limestone temples dating back to 3600 BC, before Egypt’s pyramids and even Britain’s Stonehenge. Little seems to have been learned about the ancient builders of the temples, called Hagar Qim and Mnajdra, although excavation of the sites began in the 1800s.
We spend our last evening in Mdina, the walled capital at the time of the Great Siege. It lives up to its “silent city” nickname as we wander its tunnel-like streets among a smattering of other tourists. Bacchus, our restaurant, seats us in a vaulted room that was once a gunpowder magazine.
A variety of meats, including local rabbit, join fish dishes on the menu. My soup, called aljotta, is so full of giant mussels that little room is left for broth.
The next morning, my wife and I break up our group of six and fly to Venice via Air Malta, the island’s main carrier.
The cost of visiting Malta, we would find, was considerably more reasonable than Venice — and the crowds much smaller.
Still, the European Union’s smallest nation is among its healthiest economically.
It benefits from the tourism produced by cruise lines, although travellers who come to spend a longer time are a rarer breed.
(For a multi-day stay, one of Valletta’s many charming hotels would serve nicely, as the capital is also the excursion-bus and taxi hub for the island.)
Later, we hear from our Utah friends that they loved their Malta-Barcelona pairing.
“Our time in Malta seemed a little jarring at first,” says Patricia Richards.
“It was so arid, and it sometimes felt a little cramped with all those stone walls on either side. But our appreciation increased when we realized how accessible everything was. If you want to see something in Valletta, you just walk in. ”