Valletta travel guide

Top 10 sights in Valletta

Ranked by Wikipedia language editions — proven fame.

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   Hypogeum of Ħal Saflieni

   A burial complex cut three levels into the rock between about 3300 and 3000 BC, holding the remains of perhaps seven thousand people. Its acoustics amplify a low male voice through the whole chamber, which is not thought to be accidental. Eighty visitors a day are admitted.

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2. 

   2© Diego Delso · CC BY-SA 4.0

   St. John's Co-Cathedral

   Built by the Knights of St John between 1573 and 1578, plain outside and overwhelming within — the floor is four hundred marble tomb slabs of knights, and the oratory holds Caravaggio's Beheading of St John, his largest canvas and the only work he ever signed.

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3. 

   3© Silar · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Mnajdra

   A temple complex on the south coast whose lowest building is aligned so that at the equinoxes the rising sun strikes straight down the central passage, and at the solstices it lights the edges of the doorways. It dates from before 3000 BC.

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4. 

   4© Hamelin de Guettelet · CC BY-SA 3.0

   Ħaġar Qim

   A megalithic temple of about 3600 to 3200 BC on a clifftop above the sea, older than the pyramids and Stonehenge, built of limestone blocks up to twenty tonnes. A canopy now shelters it, which spoils the photographs and saves the stone.

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5. 

   5© Joonas L. · CC BY 2.0

   Tarxien Temples

   A temple complex found by farmers in 1914 whose reliefs of bulls and a sow with piglets are the finest prehistoric carving in Malta. The lower half of a colossal draped figure stands in it; the rest has never been found.

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   Grandmaster's Palace

   The palace of the grand masters of the Order from 1571, then the British governor's residence, then the Maltese parliament, and now the president's office. Its corridors are hung with the Order's Flemish tapestries and painted with the Great Siege.

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7. 

   7© Diego Delso · CC BY-SA 4.0

   St. Paul's Cathedral, Mdina

   The cathedral of the old capital, rebuilt between 1697 and 1702 by Lorenzo Gafà after an earthquake, on the spot where the Roman governor is said to have met St Paul after his shipwreck. Its dome dominates the walled town from every direction.

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8. 

   8© Matthew Axiak · CC BY-SA 4.0

   City Gate

   Renzo Piano's gate of 2014, the fifth on this site since 1569, cut as a fifty-metre breach in the bastions with two free-standing blades of steel. The ruined opera house beside it was left roofless and turned into an open-air theatre, which was the controversial part.

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9. 

   9© Jean-Christophe BENOIST · CC BY 2.5

   Għar Dalam

   A cave a hundred and forty-four metres long whose floor yielded the bones of dwarf elephants and hippos that had shrunk on the island, and above them the earliest evidence of people in Malta, from about 5900 BC.

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10. 

    10© Matthew Axiak · CC BY-SA 4.0

    Auberge de Castille

    The sixteenth-century auberge of the Castilian and Portuguese knights, refaced in 1741 with the finest baroque front in Valletta. It is now the prime minister's office, so the inside is closed and the facade is the point.

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1. 

   1© John Haslam · CC BY 2.0

   Fort Saint Elmo

   Star fort at the tip of Valletta, built by the Knights of St John from 1552. Its garrison held out for a month in the Great Siege of 1565 before being overrun.

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2. 

   2© Lysy · CC BY-SA 3.0

   Misraħ Għar il-Kbir

   A prehistoric site at Siġġiewi in southern Malta near the Dingli cliffs, known as Clapham Junction. Cart ruts cut into the rock cross and interweave across it; dating for them ranges from the Neolithic to the medieval period.

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3. 

   3© Diego Delso · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Fort St Angelo

   The fort at the centre of the Grand Harbour, which held out through the four months of the Great Siege in 1565 while the Ottomans took the fort opposite. Its upper part is still under the sovereign authority of the Order of St John.

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4. 

   4© C T Johansson · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Upper Barrakka Gardens

   A garden in Valletta laid out on the upper tier of the St Peter and St Paul bastion, built in the 1560s. With the Lower Barrakka Gardens in the same city it commands the whole of the Grand Harbour.

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5. 

   5© Diego Delso · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Fort Ricasoli

   The largest fort in Malta, built between 1670 and 1698 to hold the other side of the harbour mouth. It has been used repeatedly as a film set — Gladiator and Troy were shot in it — which pays for some of the repairs it badly needs.

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6. 

   6© Rolf Krahl (Rotkraut) · CC BY 4.0

   Victoria Lines

   A line of defences twelve kilometres long running east to west across Malta. It separates the populous south from the north and was originally called the North West Front.

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7. 

   7© This photo was taken by Anton Zelenov. Please credit this with : Photo : Anton Z · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Basilica of Our Lady of Mount Carmel

   A Carmelite minor basilica in Valletta, part of the World Heritage site covering the whole city. The present building was raised between 1958 and 1981 on the site of a late sixteenth-century church destroyed in the Second World War; its dome is among the tallest in Malta.

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8. 

   8© Berthold Werner · CC BY-SA 3.0

   San Anton Palace

   A country palace built about 1620 by a grand master and now the official residence of the president of Malta. Its gardens, with mature trees and ponds, are open to the public and are among the few large public gardens on the island.

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9. 

   9© Helmut Seger · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Fort Manoel

   A star fort built by the Knights of St John in the eighteenth century on Manoel Island at Gżira, named after António Manoel de Vilhena, the grand master of the day. Northwest of Valletta, it commands the anchorages of Marsamxett harbour and Sliema Creek.

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10. 

    10© Tony Hisgett from Birmingham, UK · CC BY 2.0

    St. Agatha's Tower

    A bastioned watchtower at Mellieħa built between 1647 and 1649, also known as the Red Tower. It is one of the six Lascaris towers, though its form follows the earlier Wignacourt towers rather than the others.

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