A guide to Valletta, Malta

This article was produced by National Geographic Traveller (UK).

“It’s an extension of God, a celebration of his beauty and perfection,” Father Charles remarks as we stand at the threshold of St John’s Co-Cathedral in central Valletta, necks craned towards the ceiling. Armies of painted angels swirl overhead, elaborate carvings festoon archways lining the nave and painstakingly detailed marble inlay covers the floor. But all this splendour pales in comparison to the gold — thick, gleaming coats of which adorn nearly every surface in dazzling maximalist fashion. “This cathedral was built by the knights, for the knights,” Father Charles continues, a smile spreading across his white-bearded face. 

“And as you can see, the knights were very wealthy.” It’s impossible to speak about St John’s Co-Cathedral — or about the Maltese capital Valletta at all — without speaking about the Knights of St John. This religious and military order, founded in Jerusalem in the medieval ages, was charged with the defence of the Holy Land under papal charter. With support from Pope Clement VII, the exclusive collective, consisting solely of wealthy men from elite noble families, made Malta its new headquarters in the 16th century. It would go on to rule here for more than 250 years, building countless artistic wonders including the entire fortified city of Valletta — and its crowning glory, this cathedral.

“The knights came from noble families all across Europe and you can see each of their nations represented in different chapels along the nave,” Father Charles says as we begin to walk the glinting interior. As the cathedral’s in-house conservator, he knows each piece of artwork inside out, and has restored many of them himself. As we move, he shares stories of the paintings, their artists and the trials of upkeep (“I needed to reline the frame on this Mattia Preti painting — it took me a year!”). 

Valletta’s baroque old town is filled with handsome honey-hued streets.

Photograph by Francesco Lastrucci

In the comparatively austere French chapel he points out the restrained Nazarene-style fleur de lis motif; and in the Aragon, elaborate metallic sculptures. It quickly becomes clear that St John’s Co-Cathedral is not just a church, but a showcase of some of the finest 16th and 17th century European art and architecture, a bit like a living Louvre or Rijksmuseum. “Look at this wood; it doesn’t come from Malta, we don’t have big trees like this,” Father Charles enthuses over a ceiling beam, before adding, “The knights brought in all the best artists of the time — and all the best materials too.”

Stepping back out into the daylight after my ecclesiastical art-history lesson, winged angels and silver-plated liturgical paraphernalia still spiralling through my mind, I find I have a new-found appreciation for Valletta’s baroque downtown. Handsome honeyed facades are lined in ornate stonework, subtle cream townhouses sport painted wooden gallarija (closed balconies) and narrow cobbled streets run downhill towards the expansive Grand Harbour, its waters criss-crossed with yachts and colourful luzzu fishing boats.

As I wander through the compact grid of streets, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, I pass restaurants, gift shops and pods of tourists, as well as locals lucky enough to live among this aesthetic wealth year-round — couples walking fluffy Maltese dogs and collared priests scooting around corners into tiny churches. The old city headquarters of the knights may be extraordinarily pretty, but they’re also brimming with life.

(How to spend a day in Valetta, Malta’s baroque, harbourside city.)

It wasn’t always like this, of course. When the knights began to build their capital in 1566, atop a raised peninsula on Malta’s east coast, the land — flanked by that rambling natural harbour — was almost barren. Or so it seemed. Long before the knights arrived, however, the area had been pockmarked with the imprints of much more ancient peoples. 

That’s what I learn at the National Museum of Archaeology, where I head that afternoon, less than a block away from the cathedral. Simple displays in glass cabinets belie the irreplaceable treasures within: artefacts recovered from Malta’s numerous neolithic sites. Scattered across the island, some spots are thought to date to 3600 BCE — older than the Egyptian pyramids or Stonehenge.

Over millennia, travellers from across the Mediterranean came to this sun-soaked island to settle, each civilisation leaving their mark before the next succeeded. As I move from room to room in the museum, I learn about the prehistoric Sicilians who ushered in elaborate megalithic structures between 4000-2500 BCE, and the Phoenicians’ smooth pottery, precious gold amulets and purple dyed fabrics dating to around 700 BCE.

The MUŻA National Museum of Art, is only a short walk from the National Museum of Archaeology.

Photograph by Francesco Lastrucci

I see rudimentary miniature sculptures and stone necklaces of imported greenstone, and swirling stone carvings removed from the 5,000-year-old Tarxien Temples, whose ruins lie four miles from the museum.

Most remarkable of all is one of the smallest exhibits: a tiny clay figure entitled Sleeping Lady, discovered in the subterranean galleries of the Hal Saflieni Hypogeum — an ancient necropolis less than 15 minutes’ drive from where I stand. Lying on her side, eyes peacefully closed, she looks as if she’s just slipped into her eternal slumber, despite being carved millennia ago. As museum visitors pause in the dimly lit exhibition space to admire her gentle serenity, they can’t help but hush, as if not to wake her.

Timeless appeal

Over my next few days in the city, more of Valletta’s artistic riches slowly reveal themselves. The MUŻA National Museum of Art, in a beautiful baroque building a short walk from the National Museum of Archaeology, bursts with oil paintings, mosaics and polished wooden marquetry tables. In the historic Teatru Manoel, one of the oldest working theatres in Europe, a grand chandelier illuminates rows of gilded boxes.

Casa Rocca Piccola — a 440-year-old noble family home-cum-museum — showcases an extensive collection of visual treasures, including elaborate gold filigree and Maltese lace. There are historic knights-related oddities, too, such as a chess set minus the queens, designed specifically for the male-only order. As I enter a dining space laid with precious cutlery and ceramics, I feel almost like I’m in a residential version of St John’s Co-Cathedral, unsure how to take in the sheer amount of artistic detail in front of me. 

As I continue to explore, I find that the city’s aesthetic charm is not only hidden behind closed doors. One evening, at sunset, I stand in the landscaped Upper Barrakka Gardens overlooking the harbour as toy-sized boats zigzag through the waters far below and nature paints the sky pink and orange with its own masterful palette.

The Upper Barrakka Gardens overlook the harbour, and is a popular sunset hangout.

Photograph by Francesco Lastrucci

It would be easy to think of Valletta as being a kind of artistic timewarp, an unchanging world of gilded wonder. And yet its artistic evolution is not complete. A new chapter begins later this year with the opening of MICAS — the Malta International Contemporary Art Space — in vast historic fortifications and ramparts just outside the city walls.

“These works address our sense of space and time, and how these can be distorted,” says British contemporary artist Conrad Shawcross, the museum’s first exhibitor, as he leads me through a small portion of the site already open to visitors. We wander along the bleached stone ramparts towards old military vaults, ducking into the squeezed spaces to see his intricate light installation, Slow Arc Within a Cube. In the darkness, metallic grid sculptures with moving bulb mechanisms throw metamorphosing shapes across the ceiling, walls and floor, appearing to change the dimensions of the space with every passing moment.

“I made this piece 10 years ago and it’s been shown in various locations around the world, but I’m delighted it’s found a permanent resting place here in Malta,” explains Conrad as we watch his light machines cast hypnotic illuminations. One of MICAS’s aims is to balance Malta’s extensive history with exciting artistic innovation — both local and global — and this blend of fort architecture and modern craftwork seems the perfect embodiment. It’s a theme explored further in Conrad’s large-scale installation on the ramparts, Beacons. Blinking against the noon sun after our time in the dim vaults, we gaze up at the series of huge colourful discs, mounted flag-like on poles. Visible from far across the harbour, they look like some kind of naval semaphoric code — and in fact, Conrad tells me, they are. Pointing to each oversized disc in turn, he spells out their succinct meaning: ‘NOW’.

On my final night in the city, I return to St John’s Co-Cathedral. The clusters of visitors have cleared out for the day, leaving the vast interiors eerily quiet. Showing my concert ticket to the guard, I’m ushered into a small oratory, where I take a seat among an intimate audience.

Lights are dimmed, a harp is played and a woman sings sweet baroque medleys by candlelight as we gaze up towards the altar, which is adorned with what is arguably Valletta’s most precious artistic treasure of all. The Beheading of St John the Baptist, an oil painting by 16th-century Italian artistic master Caravaggio, stretches more than five metres wide, a brutal and haunting scene of disimpassioned spectatorship. A prostrate St John, with his throat brutally slit, bleeds on the ground while callous onlookers support a stoney-faced executioner. The only humanity in the painting is embodied by a single, horrified woman.

The longer I stare, baroque music washing across the oratory, the more details emerge from the darkness. Caravaggio’s signature in the pool of blood — this is his only signed work — and the glint of the silver knife. It induces awe not for ornate gilding, like so much in the city, but for intimate drama. We’re a small group of strangers collectively witnessing the stirring tragedy of this painting, 400 years after the artist put brush to canvas.

It’s hard to compute all that Caravaggio’s eternal masterpiece has witnessed in its long history, or what it will see in years to come. But for me, a fleeting visitor to this place, the concert becomes a vivid living postcard of my time in Valletta. A brief but beautiful moment shared by many over the centuries.

Published in the June 2024 issue of National Geographic Traveller (UK).

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