Day 4 in Malta: Last-minute museum visits

On my last half-day in Malta, I woke up early and made a solo trip to Valletta. Brent and Joel, who had arrived in Malta a day earlier than I did, had visited and recommended the archaeological museum in town, so they did not join me for the first few hours. I took the number one bus from Senglea to main gate of Valletta, joining the ranks of the immigrant community who make this whole island run on their morning commute. After finishing my breakfast, I walked to the eastern end of the island to take in the views and to kill some time before the museum’s opening hours. Unexpectedly, it opened a little before nine o’clock, and I slipped in as the first visitor of the day.

The main attraction at the archaeological museum is its collection of artefacts from Malta’s megalithic tombs. These include an altar and a few patterned stones, but the most remarkable decorations by far are the stone statues, which vary in size from carvings that can fit in the palm of a hand to the remnants of what must have been three-metre-tall giants. The artistic style can be described simply as plump. Thought to be fertility symbols, the figures have such massive thighs, hips, and breasts that they seem more akin to the likes of Botero than Rubens. The most famous of these statues is the so-called Sleeping Lady, a relatively small figure that has survived in one piece to the present day.

Beside these remarkable works of art, the museum exhibits skulls from the Ħal Saflieni Hypogeum and finds from the Bronze Age and the Phoenician Era. These are not very elaborate or numerous, but they do include a Phoenician sarcophagus and one of the two Cippi of Melqart, the pedestals that helped modern scholars decipher Phoenician writing. The archaeological museum also happens to be one of the only places in the world to have artefacts from a Phoenician shipwreck, though most of these are just amphorae. Finally, the museum houses a collection of coins from across Maltese history.

I met Brent and Joel again at the Grandmaster’s Palace. The first section of this museum explained the building’s role as the seat of the Grandmaster of the Order of Saint John from 1530 until the Napoleonic Wars and Malta’s absorption into the British Empire as a protectorate, when the palace became the residence of the British governor. The palace’s halls retain their erewhile paintings and decorations, and several of them – for example the Grandmaster’s audience hall and bedroom – have been faithfully restored to their original layout.

The most impressive site at the palace, however, is the armoury. Surrounded on all sides by walls plastered in helmets and flags, this huge hall contains several long rows of glass displays with hundreds of weapons, pieces of armour, and other war paraphernalia, all arranged in chronological order from the early sixteenth century to the late eighteenth century. To reinforce this historiographic aspect, the glass cases are separated by little signboards with major events, like the fall of Tenochtitlan and the Thirty Years’ War.

After taking a look at a temporary exhibition of Goya’s war engravings, Brent and Joel walked me to buy a quick lunch before calling a taxi to the airport; I got my food from a focacceria with a glass square on the floor through which we could see the cook at work. I would continue the next part of my journey alone. At two in the afternoon, I boarded my plane to Cyprus, while Brent and Joel returned to Greece to resume their trek across the Eurasian continent.