Day 1 in Malta: Touring Valletta and its prehistoric environs

I flew into Malta from Zurich Airport on Friday evening. I had originally intended to go with my dad, but he had to pull out a few weeks before the trip, so I reached out to at least a dozen of my friends asking them if they would be willing to drop everything and join me. As luck would have it, my friends Brent and Joel had just made it to Greece on their yearlong trip around the world, and being American, they thought nothing of the distance. They arrived in Malta a day before I did and had properly settled into our apartment by the time I got there.

We began my first full day in Malta with a walk from our apartment in Senglea to Birgu, both Senglea and Birgu being little fortified cities on peninsulas just across the bay from Valletta. Probably the main sight on this side of the bay is Fort Saint Angelo. We arrived by its gate twenty minutes after nine but found it closed despite the fort’s official opening time of nine o’clock, which was prominently displayed on the signboard outside. Reassured by the board, I rang the bell, and the lady on the other side of the intercom promptly informed me that the fort opened at nine. As politely as I could, I told her that it was nine, or rather, it was already nine twenty. She quickly rang us in and came down to open the gate.

Fort Saint Angelo served as the headquarters of the Order of Saint John during the Great Siege of Malta by the Ottomans in 1565, which Malta famously weathered, enabling the order to remain in charge for over two hundred years until the islands were usurped by Napoleon. The order had only established its headquarters in Malta in 1530 after the Ottomans drove it away from Rhodes.

One fact that continues to confuse me and that I need to write down so that I can refer to it when I inevitably forget is that the official name of this order is the “Sovereign Military Hospitaller Order of Saint John of Jerusalem, of Rhodes and of Malta.” Some sources refer to the Knights Hospitaller, which is the original Catholic military order that gave rise not just to the order of Malta but also those of England, Brandenburg, the Netherlands, and Sweden. The period of Maltese history between 1530 and 1798 is sometimes referred to as Hospitaller Malta. Following a rebellion against French rule, Malta and its smaller neighbour Gozo became a British protectorate in 1800 and returned to the Order in 1802. Nonetheless, the two islands officially became a British colony in 1814.

From Birgu, we called a taxi to Fort Saint Elmo in Valletta proper. In 1565, this fort withstood the Ottoman siege for almost a month, buying time for reinforcements to arrive from Spain. A year after the siege, the Grand Master of the order, Jean Parisot de Valette, commissioned the construction of the new city Valletta. We saw de Valette’s tomb – along with the tombs of several other grand masters – in the crypt of the lavish Co-Cathedral of Saint John, which we visited right after touring Fort Saint Elmo. The Co-Cathedral is famous for housing Caravaggio’s Beheading of Saint John the Baptist, the painter’s largest canvas and the only one he ever signed.

A little after two, Brent and Joel headed over to Tarxien, as we did not manage to get tickets to the Hypogeum of Ħal Saflieni for the same time. I strolled around Valletta for a bit longer, walking around clockwise to take in the views of Fort Manoel and taking a look inside the Anglican Pro-Cathedral of Saint Paul. By the time I had crossed back again to the southeastern side of the peninsula and walked down to the waterfront, the clouds closed in, and I decided it was time for me to call a cab to Ħal Tarxien, a prehistoric temple complex just a few blocks away from Ħal Saflieni and dating to around 3400 BCE.

As I learned from my extensive research on the subject, it is not necessary to acquire tickets to Ħal Tarxien in advance, which is the very opposite of the ordeal of trying to visit the Hypogeum of Ħal Saflieni. Tickets for the latter are sold out for weeks if not months in advance, so I took extra care to buy them all the way back in the summer before even acquiring plane tickets to Malta. I cannot say it was not worth it. The Hypogeum was dug into the ground and carved into the rock sometime after 3300 BCE, serving as a burial ground for some three thousand years. While few structures survive from that era and no structures survive with their roofs, the Hypogeum emulates what these buildings would have looked like – including, crucially, their ceilings. Its winding pathways lead past several burial chambers with chiselled entrances and painted ceilings, constantly playing with perspective and recasting lights and shadows.