Valetta (Malta)

As the capital cities of Europe go, Valletta is a rather recent invention. It was founded in 1566, and built in a hurry, as if to make up for lost time. For perhaps the oddest thing about Valletta is that there wasn't a city on its site before.

A glance at a map shows the strategic importance of the island of Malta. It sits amid the narrows between the eastern and western Mediterranean, so that any shipping going from one to the other ...
...plying the shortest route between northern Africa and southern Italy.

Malta is a natural location for a naval base, and has a natural harbour to serve just that purpose. Or rather it has two in close proximity, known respectively as Marsamxett Harbour and the Grand Harbour. Viewed on the map, as if in cross-section, they resemble nothing more than the top and bottom of a gaping mouth, with a tongue sticking out between them. The tongue ... more

As the capital cities of Europe go, Valletta is a rather recent invention. It was founded in 1566, and built in a hurry, as if to make up for lost time. For perhaps the oddest thing about Valletta is that there wasn't a city on its site before.

A glance at a map shows the strategic importance of the island of Malta. It sits amid the narrows between the eastern and western Mediterranean, so that any shipping going from one to the other must pass close to its shores, as must any traffic plying the shortest route between northern Africa and southern Italy.

Malta is a natural location for a naval base, and has a natural harbour to serve just that purpose. Or rather it has two in close proximity, known respectively as Marsamxett Harbour and the Grand Harbour. Viewed on the map, as if in cross-section, they resemble nothing more than the top and bottom of a gaping mouth, with a tongue sticking out between them. The tongue is a hilly peninsula of solid limestone, hard to attack once fortified. Gun batteries placed on it can command both harbours and their entrances.

It's the spot from which any military commander might choose to control the harbours and with them Malta too, but until Jean Parisot de la Vallette came along in the late 16th Century and built Valletta, none of them did.

Location, location, location

What concentrated de la Vallette's mind on the value of the site was not imaginative foresight but bitter experience. He was Grand Master of the Knights of St John of the Hospital, a crusading order that had been forced over preceding centuries to retreat from Palestine via Rhodes to make their base in Malta in 1530. Their main enmity was directed against the muslim Ottoman Empire, a power that returned the compliment by invading Malta in force in 1565.

In the ensuing 'Great Siege' the knights, with the support of the christian locals, staved off the Ottoman assault, but it was a close-run thing. Key to the resistance was Fort St Elmo, at the tip of the peninsula on which Valletta now stands, which prevented the attackers gaining control of the Grand Harbour and which was only taken towards the end of the campaign at a cost of some 8000 men, about a quarter of the invading force. Exhausted, the Ottomans abandoned their siege of the knights' remaining outposts and sailed home, never to return. But de la Vallette and his lieutenants feared a renewed assault and, noting how valuable Fort St Elmo had been in the defence, set about fortifying the rest of the peninsula.

Once started, they moved quickly. The fortifications, vast by any standards, were completed in just five years. The streets and buildings within the walls, laid out and planned to a meticulous standard almost unparalleled at that time, were mostly in place by the end of the century. Despite the slings and arrows of two subsequent sieges and some rebuilding since, the core of the city is essentially unchanged from those days. So, although it is one of the most recently founded of European capitals, Valletta has a cohesive period style and atmosphere that few others can emulate.

Town Planning, 16th Century Style

Walking around Valletta, one is constantly reminded that it was originally built as much as a fortress as a city. It is compact, not much over a kilometre from the seaward point to the inland-facing walls. These overlook a deep cut down into the underlying limestone - known as the Great Ditch - running right across the neck of the peninsula, which is about seven hundred metres wide at this point. Apart from serving as a dry moat on the landward side, the ditch was also one of the quarries from which rock was hewn to erect ramparts and bastions right around the city.

Within the walls, the streets are laid out in a grid, with only minor divergences dictated by local topography. Where the ground is steep there are steps, preserving the straightness of the streets rather than letting them curl around the contours. This was to allow cooling sea breezes to blow through the city during the heat of summer. Similarly, it was stipulated that buildings must several storeys high, to maximise the shade at street level, and that all should have cisterns to store rainwater. Before the houses were even built, a network of ditches was furrowed into the rock beneath their foundations; this became a sewerage system flushed daily with seawater brought up from the harbours. By the foetid standards of most cities of the time, 16th Century Valletta must have been an extraordinarily modern and sanitary place. It still feels clean and airy today.

The houses themselves are tightly-terraced and flat-fronted, faced in the same creamy-yellow limestone of which the whole city is built. They are without front gardens or porches (forbidden in the original planning ordinances), though many of the frontages have their upper storeys decorated with enclosed balconies. The basic style is simple, but the detail is often ornate, making for an elegant impression overall, both in the busiest thoroughfares and the narrower back alleys.

Planning a visit

Valletta is a city you could wander round endlessly, discovering new aspects of interest all the time. In doing so, however, it is essential that you don't omit to:

1. Walk the length of the main street, the Triq ir-Repubblika, on or near which many of the historic buildings are to be found, coming back by the parallel Triq il-Merkanti.

2. Walk the complete circuit of the ramparts, which will not only bring you to other features of interest, but also afford you outstanding views across the harbours as you go.

Either of these will take you half a day. Don't, if you can avoid it, try to do both in the same day, though, since the opening times of the main attractions won't permit it. There's no room to go into them fully here, but a bit of prior research into these times is needed to get the most out of a visit. Anyway, let's take the two 'must sees' in turn:

City centre

Entering Valletta by the main gates is an experience in itself. Immediately outside is Malta's main bus-station, where vintage buses painted in a lurid orange-and-yellow livery jostle for room with passengers, loiterers and stalls. But no traffic crosses the bridge over the Great Ditch, and once you are through the stone gateway and within the walls the only hubbub is that of your fellow-tourists and peddlers of souvenirs. Cars do have restricted access to Valletta, but the main streets are mostly pedestrianised.

The Triq ir-Repubblika is straight ahead and lined with shops and restaurants for the first hundred metres or so, until you reach the St John's Cathedral on your right, opposite the colonnaded frontage of the Law Courts on the left. St John's Cathedral (strictly "Co-Cathedral" an odd title signifying that it shares the honour with another edifice in the ancient capital of Mdina) looks rather plain on the outside. Inside, it is ornate to the point of excess, hardly a square centimetre unadorned with carved stonework, inlays, gilt, paintings, statuary and similar High Baroque decoration. Adjoining the Cathedral is a museum housing some notable religious art, including Caravaggio's Beheading of St John the Baptist. Well worth the queuing and an entrance fee of 6€ (c£5 at today's dispiriting exchange rate).

The square beyond the Cathedral is filled with the tables of two open air cafés and it's worth taking on some refreshment before seeing the Grandmaster's Palace on the far side. Though the Knights were deposed by the French during the Napoleonic Wars and never reinstated, the Palace remains the seat of Maltese Government to this day, and only parts are open to the public. These parts, though, include some impressive and beautifully decorated state rooms and the Armoury - an extensive museum of antique weaponry. The joint entrance fee is 4.66€ (c£4), again well worth it.

The Grandmaster's Palace faces St George's Square, and by crossing it and descending the street to the left you will soon reach the Manoel Theatre, one of the oldest and prettiest in Europe. In my short stay in Valletta I never managed to see a performance there (if I had, I might have made it the subject of a separate review), but I did undertake the fascinating backstage tour at 4€ (c£3.40), and ate a decent snack lunch in the courtyard café; there is also a full restaurant for pre- and post- performance dining.

Circling back to return to the main gates via the Triq il-Merkanti will bring you past Valletta's market (always worth a visit) and some fine facades, including that of the Auberge de Castille which once housed one of the Knights' main sub-divisions and now houses the Maltese Prime Minister, and the bastion of St James, deep within the massive walls of which one finds the Malta Arts Centre. Entry to this is free, and no staff were in attendance while my wife and I spent a rather surreal half-hour there finding our way around a display of installation art (or so I assume it to have been).

Rampart walk

Which way round to do this depends on when you do it. If you time an afternoon anti-clockwise circuit correctly it will bring you to the north-western stretch of the walls in time to see the sun set beyond Marsamxett Harbour, which is rather a fine view.

This means you will have started out going south-east from the main gates. Before mounting the walls you can try to visit the Lascaris war rooms under St James' Bastion, from which the British defence of the island was coordinated during the Second World War. Be warned, though, that the entrance is hard to find and that they may not be open when you reach it (they weren't when we went, although we were within the advertised hours). Whether thwarted or otherwise, you then ascend to the Upper Barrakka Gardens, a pleasantly green and shady spot, with a magnificent outlook towards the dockyards and forts on the far side of the Grand Harbour. Just below the gardens is a battery of old but well-maintained cannon, one of which is fired in a daily salute at 11.00 a.m.

The view of the harbour stays with you as you walk round to the Lower Barrakka Gardens, another little leafy oasis, beyond which is a huge bell hung in a stone memorial, which commemorates the Second World War siege and those lost in the convoys sent to relieve the island. On from here past the Knights' Hospital (they were dedicated to healing as well as to fighting holy wars), you reach Fort St Elmo, the redoubt that withstood the Ottoman attack so long in 1565 and much strengthened since. It is open at weekends only, and then only partially. On the day when we were there, little more than the main courtyard could be seen, though that was being used to stage a dramatic re-enactment of the siege of 1798-1800.

The French fleet that took Malta in 1798 went on to be destroyed by the Nelson at the Battle of the Nile, leaving the way clear for the British in turn to capture the island. But within the walls of Valletta the small French garrison held out for two long years before capitulating. After that, Malta was British until 1964, and many relics of British rule remain, including driving on the left, red pillar boxes and telephone kiosks and a universal knowledge of spoken English, which is very welcome to the visitor since Maltese - akin linguistically to a westernised Arabic - is a difficult language for non-natives.

Although little of Fort St Elmo is officially open, by poking around its environs one can see quite a bit more, including finding one's way past corrugated-iron fishing shacks to explore the isolated rocky foreshore beneath its walls, an intriguing break from the well-worn tourist circuit.

From here on you are overlooking Marsamxett Harbour, and soon you see below you the little jetty from which the ferry goes across to Sliema on the far side. Considering that it is surrounded by water, Valletta seems remarkably poorly serves by ferries, though. Even to take a cruise around the two harbours you have to first cross to Sliema and change boats. The cruise is highly recommended, but assuming you leave that for another time you must now ascend up steep steeps to St Michael's Bastion, atop which is a little garden known as Hastings Gardens for the final panorama before making your way back to the main gates.

Around and about

The scenic and historic interest of the area is not confined to Valletta itself. If - to mix the anatomical metaphor - the peninsula on which it stands were regarded as a finger rather than a tongue, the next knuckle down is an area known as Floriana. It was developed in the century following Valletta and is of less architectural interest, though it is also fortified to the point of excess. Almost hidden among its battlements are the attractive St Philip Gardens and the adjacent Argotti Botanical Gardens, though the latter seem to share the local failing of unpredictable opening hours.

Across the Grand Harbour are the "three cities" of Vittoriosa, Senglea and Conspicua. These are more ancient than Valletta, surrounding as they do the inlets that were the original harbour mooring-places and still constitute the main dockyards. Among them are some surviving original fortifications, including Fort St Angelo, the Knights' original Great Siege headquarters. Although badly battered by bombing in World War Two, this area still looks as if it holds much of interest; I regret that I managed to see all too little of it during my visit.

By contrast the resort of Sliema, on the far side of Marsamxett Harbour, has very little of historic interest. The seaward-facing promenade is pleasant enough for a stroll but is essentially unremarkable, and there is quite a lot of new hotel development under construction there.

Where to stay

Although the rest of the island of Malta is littered with new hotels, there are remarkably few places to stay within Valletta itself. Walking round, we noticed the rather quaint British Hotel and the Grand Harbour Hotel, both well-situated for views of the Grand Harbour, but both seemingly small and with no pretensions to grandeur.

We stayed just outside the walls in Floriana at the Phoenicia, which does have pretensions to grandeur, which it almost lives up to. It was indeed comfortable, the food and service good, and the swimming-pool, in the shadow of one of the bastions overlooking Marsamxett Harbour, excellent. But it's quite pricey (can't tell you exactly how pricey, since we booked as part of a package), especially if you pay extra for a room with a balcony, since the latter will hardly have room for you to sit outside. You also need to avoid rooms facing the bus station, which is noisy from the early hours of the morning.

Food and Eating out

Fish and (for some reason) rabbit are the local specialities, apart from which the cuisine is typically Mediterranean. There are some excellent - though not very cheap, especially at the current rate for the euro - restaurants in Valletta and also some good cafés and snack bars, but not much in between.

The pick of the restaurants we experienced was the Malata, which has outdoor tables in Palace Square opposite the Grandmasters' palace. The food is excellent, the ambience charming and (if you like that kind of thing) there is live jazz twice a week. We also enjoyed dining at Chez Cyrille, a few doors up from the theatre, which offers good cooking and is pleasantly informal, though it does get crowded and hot.

The formal restaurant at the Phoenicia is expensive, but in the bar or on the adjacent terrace one can order copious and moderately-priced snacks, which for a fancy hotel are pretty good value.

How to go

BA, Air Malta, Easyjet and Ryanair all fly to Malta, as do numerous package holiday carriers. We went on a package with Malta specialists Sunspot, who were efficient and competitive for what we wanted. Air Malta, though, with whom we flew, is not an airline I'd recommend; horrible food and cabin staff offhand to the point of rudeness. As an aside, it is perhaps worth mentioning that we did not find the Maltese in general very friendly or welcoming. Perhaps it's the siege mentality.

When to go

Avoid mid-summer if you can. Malta is on a parallel with Tunis in North Africa and within the city of Valletta the temperature will be baking hot, notwithstanding the vaunted ventilation of sea breezes down the straight uncluttered streets. It will also be very crowded. Spring would probably be a good time. We went in October, off-peak for crowds and when the weather was pleasantly warm, though we did experience some thundery showers.

Recommendation

Valletta is a truly fascinating historic city that fully deserves its status as a World Heritage Site. Dramatically situated, architecturally impressive and full of atmosphere, it merits more than a day-trip if you are staying elsewhere on the island of Malta. Indeed, from what I saw of the rest of the island, Valletta seems to me to be the main reason for visiting it at all, and the best place to stay on it.

© torr 2008

Ciao please note: Valletta has two Ls, just like Mallorca, Hallstadt or Llandudno. 

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