MALTA --22 --28 February 2015

Malta—a surprise on my doorstep

I had never been to Malta before—one of those places that seems “European” and therefore tame and familiar and not a place that I “needed” to see until “later”. I had heard of Malta of course---I knew that Prince Philip had been stationed there in World War II and that he and the then Princess Elizabeth had spent the early years of their marriage there before she became Queen. I knew that they have returned to visit quite often and apparently like it very much. However I had also heard that it was a cheap package holiday destination and that it was covered in down-market high-rise hotels and time share villas like the Costa Brava, so it didn’t sound immediately appealing to me! Beyond that I didn’t know much.

However on one of my walks in London, by Tower Hill, I saw a monument explaining how Malta been besieged for many months by the Germans and Italians early in the war in an effort to starve it into capitulation and then had had more bombs dropped on it in 1941 to 1942 than anywhere else in Europe throughout the entire war. But the island stayed undefeated and King George VI awarded the whole island the George Cross for bravery.

So I bought a guide book (the excellent Bradt).

I learned that Malta is also the location of some extraordinary, sophisticatedly- crafted stone age tombs and temples , including the earliest  in the western world(5000 to 3600 BC) so at least 1000 years before the pyramids or Stonehenge . In addition there are traces of Bronze Age, Phoenician, Roman, and Arab occupation.

And then in the 1550s the island was granted to the immensely wealthy Knights of St John (yes , correct, “Knights of St John” as in today’s St John’s Ambulance with that distinctive Maltese Cross—also and perhaps better known as the “Knights of Malta”) by the Holy Roman Emperor.  

The Knights turned it into an “island fortress” from where they battled against the Arab incursions into the Mediterranean and Europe that dominated the middle ages and beyond. There followed a golden 250 years before Napoleon briefly captured Malta and then it was quickly taken over by the British Navy who used its key strategic location to control the Mediterranean. Malta’s location was crucial in World War II—close to enemy Italy but superbly suited as a refuelling and supply point for the air force as well as the navy and the war in North Africa. Malta became independent in 1964 and then became a republic and joined the EU.

Although the weather was appalling while I was there (and those who had come on cheap package holidays to the monstrous hotels on the east coast beaches must have had a sodden time), I found the island fascinating for its ancient and modern history, its archaeology and its geology, but not as its present day incarnation as a cheap holiday island.

Malta’s location & geography

Malta has a superb location, in the middle of the Mediterranean. It sits on a north-west/south-east axis slanted towards Sicily which is only 96 km away. There are three islands: Malta, by far the largest; and Gozo, much smaller and less developed, more rural and conservative; and the small island of Comino, located more or less between Gozo and Malta and without permanent habitation. Malta and Gozo are separated by a fairly narrow strait that you can see across and which is crossed by a very efficient car ferry in about half an hour. 

The islands rise from the sea like the fortress they became and have no mountains or other significant contours. There are almost no trees and what there are are small and stunted.


Apparently the islands were once tree covered but these were all cut down by prehistoric inhabitants, and because of the exposed terrain, the shallow soil above the limestone bedrock, and the pressure of agriculture and human habitation, they have never grown prolifically again.  

There are some current efforts to re-establish the native trees in nature reserves but from the look of it they will never achieve great abundance or height—more like wind-swept heath land scrub. But these areas are also fertile ground for lovely simple wild flowers.

Malta is on the migration route for a lot of birds but I am afraid you don’t see many---apparently the favourite sport of Maltese men is shooting and trapping birds, particularly small ones. This is prohibited by EU law but because this is a political hot potato in Malta they have  gained a limited exemption so it is only slowly dying out---some court challenges have included that bird hunting is an inalienable right of Maltese men and that denying this to them is a threat to their mental health!

Malta has no rivers or streams or lakes and those on Gozo are only seasonal, so all the water on the islands has traditionally come from rain—although I understand there are also now some desalination plants.  All the islands are made of solid limestone, and it is this limestone that has made human occupation possible and shaped its history.

Limestone is porous and so in the rainy season it soaks up the rain and stores it for use by people and vegetation in the hot dry season. Limestone is also fairly soft and easily carved and shaped, which made possible the Stone Age temples and the Knights’ vast fortifications which ring the island. Limestone is the exclusive building material. There are two kinds of limestone in Malta: the softer globigerina, which is a lovely golden creamy colour and is easily cut and carved, but also erodes more easily than the harder, greyer coralline limestone which as the name implies is made of coral and which was used for building where the wind and elements were more likely to erode.

The glowing creamy colour of the limestone houses, churches and fortifications look so warm and satisfyingly solid. But because of its softness and ease of carving, the underground layers of limestone are riddled with tunnels, caves, catacombs and cisterns.

These are utterly fascinating. They range in date from 4000 to 3600 BC when the stone age burial rooms and temples were excavated, to the Bronze Age and Phoenician when burial niches for cremated remains were hollowed out, to the webs of  Roman catacombs and the Medieval crypts, to the vast conical cisterns to hold rain water that every house in every town from the Middle Ages until recent times was required to have, and right up to World War II when air raid shelters and tunnels were carved under the streets so that  the population could retreat during the thousands of air raids that the islanders endured.

And because of the small area of Malta people of different eras over thousands of years tended to re-occupy areas where previous peoples lived. So these layers of history often overlap—you can walk underground from a Roman catacomb into a World War II air raid shelter in a few yards, and nineteenth century house cisterns are adjacent to Stone Age underground temples.

  

An example of the massive limestone battlements which the Knights of Malta built to protect their cities from attack from the Turkish Muslims

The short distance across the strait between the larger island of Malta and its smaller sister Gozo

This gives an idea of the small size of Malta and its urbanisation. This picture is taken from the battlements of Mdina near the west coast, looking towards the east coast city of Valletta

Another view from the terrace of my hotel room in Mdina looking across the fields towards the south-east

This is a vew from the Dingli cliffs on the west coast of Malta. Notice the rugged coralline limestone of the cliffs.

Pretty wildflowers growing in the sparse thin earth above the limestone

Lovely oranges

People and language

The population of Malta is only 425,000 people, but with an area of only 315 square kilometres, this gives it the fourth highest population density in the world!  Ninety-four percent of them live in urban areas.

The Maltese language is Semitic, so related to Arabic. The vocabulary is about 50% Arabic plus Italian, English and a little French. Although the written words are in western script the pronunciation is very difficult to grasp. It is not one of those “ethnic” languages like Welsh or Breton which is cherished by only a few speakers and otherwise left for academics to study.


“Malti” is spoken by all Maltese people in their daily lives. One evening I was eavesdropping on a high society cocktail party in the lobby of my hotel in Mdina and noticed how easily people switched back and forth between English and Malti in social conversation.

The two official languages are Malti and English but apparently a lot of people also speak Italian because of the close proximity to Sicily. Before World War II pitted Malta against Italy, trade and family ties between Malta and Italy were strong and many Maltese went to Italy for their further education since it is so close.

The Maltese are on the whole quite small and stocky with darkish “Mediterranean” complexions. As in so many countries these days there is a definite tendency to obesity. On the other hand there are some very distinguished, aristocratic-looking Maltese especially in Mdina, the old capital city.


Mdina was the preferred home of the Maltese upper class during the Knights of St John-era when Valletta and the “Three Cities” on the east coast (Bormla, Birgu and L’Isla) became the highly fortified preserve of the Knights and their entourages and soldiers.

The elegant dining room in the palazzo Casa Roca Piccola, an aristocrats' home

Another palazzo, this time in Mdina

The kitchen hearth in the Palazzo Falson in Mdina

Note the limestone arches, very typical of the cellars of the palazzi in Mdina, some of which date back to the 1300s

Religion and its central importance in the Maltese life

The Maltese are deeply deeply Roman Catholic—apparently 98% of the population identify themselves this way. Right up until 1798 when the French threw him out, Malta had its own Inquisitor to interrogate (often under torture) those who were rumoured not to  be following the church’s rules. Like the better known “Spanish Inquisition” there was a Roman Inquisition which originally provided the Maltese Inquisitor. I visited his Palace in Birgu with fairly graphic exhibits which made me a bit sick.

The church remains the centre of any community and particularly on Gozo there seems to be a competition between villages to build the biggest and most ostentatious basilica or pseudo Gothic monstrosity. On Gozo which is quite flat you can see for miles these huge churches looming up out of the surrounding villages and countryside.


Fortunately they are all made of the lovely golden limestone so they don’t look too garish. I suppose in today’s times when Europe is threatened with the unspeakable incursions of radical Islam in the Middle East and North Africa, it is no bad thing that there is a deeply Catholic country, well-versed in self-defence, strategically located guarding the frontiers of Europe.

Believe it or not this is a portable altar for use when the aristocratic family was travelling

One of the villages in Gozo with its massive basilica dominating the houses, all limestone

And this is the family chapel in the Casa Roca Piccola, an aristocratic pallazo in Valletta

Note the huge church on the horizon looming over the town

Food

The food and wines of Malta are pretty good, including their little pasties filled with ground meat or cheese which are a favourite snack--the equivalent of the South American empanada or the Cornish pasty. The cuisine is Italian/Mediterranean, so lots of pasta dishes, and their vegetables , fish and rabbit are excellent. Honey is magnificent because the bees feed on the heath land wildflowers. I also liked their wines—I’d never had them before.

The best and most authentic meal I had was undoubtedly at Legligin, a tiny owner-run restaurant in the half-cellar of a traditional house on Santa Lucia Street in Valletta. There is no menu and you are just served small portions of a number of local dishes—so I had roast vegetables, fish, rabbit, beef, squid, lovely homemade bread and Maltese wine. I recommend it, although I understand that is the tourist season it may be hard to get in.

The charming Leglegin restaurant in Valletta. Note the limestone walls

Getting around

Malta and Gozo are tiny land masses. The larger island of Malta is only 27 Km long and 15 km wide and even by winding road no place is more than 50 km from anywhere else. You can drive from the cliffs of the south west coast to the heart of the city of Valletta (the main road goes under the airport runway!) in about 20 minutes.

And so particularly on the island of Malta the spread of houses covers much of the land area--the suburbs of Mdina near the west coast and the suburbs of Valletta on the east coast meet each other and spread across the whole width of the island. The east coast from top to toe is one vast conurbation.

As mentioned earlier Malta is the fourth highest population density in the world and 94% of the people live in urban settings.But fortunately there are still plenty of single-family villas and town houses, and any high-rises are either hotels or only up to 10 or 12 stories at most, no glass and concrete business towers. Some places however, particularly in fertile valleys in the middle of Malta and on Gozo, support fine market gardens.

Roads in Malta are appalling and the signage is some of the worst and most confusing I have ever run across (although, thinking about it, I guess Cuba is worse). Road construction is ubiquitous but detours are not marked –in fact it seems that the first thing that a road construction crew does when beginning a project is to remove all signage.

The signage is made more complex for the tourist because the names for places given in the guide books and tourist information are not really the local names at all. And some places have several different names. So you may be looking for a sign to Vittoriosa and the only sign you see is for Birgu—which is its other name! The Maltese drive badly and fast too and fender-benders are common.

But, if you are going to Malta I would strongly advise that you do rent a little car, preferably one that is already battered a bit so that any new small scratches and dents won’t show. (Don’t forget, though, to take pictures of any bumps and scrapes already on the car before you leave the rental parking lot.) However I survived unscathed in a week of driving all over Malta and Gozo.

And buy a map—you can buy a flimsy but serviceable one at the airport  when you arrive. The ones provided by the car hire companies are useless.

It seems that most tourists travel directly from the airport to their tourist resort in a tour bus and they stay there throughout their holiday, or they take taxis or even the local buses, but rarely rent their own wheels. Frankly, you will miss so much and never get any real understanding or experience of Malta unless you have your own vehicle to explore side roads and to get from place to place without delay.

And another view from the Mdina battlements over towards the east coast--you can clearly see the sea on the other side of  east coast and how built up the island is

The Knights of St John (the Knights of Malta)

The impact of the 250 year reign of the Roman Catholic Knights of St John, often called the Knights of Malta, is omnipresent in Malta.  The Knights were originally formed in 1070 as “hospitallers” to care for the sick and shelter poor Christian pilgrims in Jerusalem in the "Holy Land". As the Crusades really got underway their role increased and in 1113 they were recognised as an official Order of the Roman Catholic Church, but with some autonomy from Rome and with their own “Grand Master”.

As the Crusades heated up they took on a more military role to protect Christians from Muslim attack and to engage in battle with the Muslims. They became warrior monks. They also became very very rich. Because of their military prowess coupled with their status in the Roman Catholic hierarchy the Order attracted noblemen and their large donations of wealth.

The Knights made their headquarters in Rhodes in 1309 from where they harried the Muslims by sea with their formidable navy.  In 1522 the Turks finally threw them out of Rhodes and they were homeless until 1530 when they took control of Malta with the blessing of the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V. 

They were besieged there by the Turks, but in 1565 they won out and proceeded to establish Malta as the “Island Fortress” it still is. The Knights were organised into “langues” or divisions representing their home countries and language, and each langue had its own mansions, regalia and chapels in the cathedral.

Their naval prowess was enhanced by the fine harbours offered by Malta and they set about strengthening the defences of the island with large forts and massive,  thick protective city walls and watch-towers around the coast of Malta and Gozo. They fortified the original east coast harbour cities of Birgu, L’Isla and Bormla (now known, to tourists at least, as the “Three Cities”) on peninsulas which extend like fingers into the Grand Harbour. 

But after the Great Seige by the Turks in 1565 they built a new fortress capital on the high flat-topped peninsula across the “Grand Harbour”, which became Valletta and from where they ruled the islands, gradually over the next two and half centuries losing their “oomph” so that they capitulated to Napoleon in 1798 without much resistance.

As mentioned the Knights were enormously wealthy and many of their grand buildings and “palazzi” are now museums, such as the massive sprawling Grand Master’s House in Valletta with an amazing display of armaments, if you like that sort of thing, which rivals that in the Tower of London. The walls of the galleries and rooms are lined with paintings of previous Grand Masters (some awfully amateurish paintings) and religious figures, banqueting rooms and ornate chapels.  

Around the coast of the island a number of the Knights’ strategically placed watchtowers have been carefully restored. These were of varying sizes and importance and housed from a handful up to about 40 men. There was a system of flag and fire signals between the towers to warn of attack. The Red Tower, high on a steep little hill overlooking the west coast and the channel between Malta and Gozo, is probably the largest and most impressive of these.

Display of armour in the treasury of the Grand Master of the Knights of Malta's palazzo. The Knights were a military order or the Roman Catholic church, charged with protecting the Mediterranean from the Muslims who controlled Turkey, the Middle East and North Africa and even Spain from the 1300s

A courtyard in the Grand Master's palazzo in Valletta

The Red Tower, one of the series of defensive watchtowers which the Knights built around the coast of Malta and Gozo. The Red Tower guards the strait between Malta and Gozo and has a commanding view of the whole north coast.

An ornate gallery in the Grand Master's palazzo. Note the suits or armour.

St. John’s Co-Cathedral in Valletta

But the crowning glory of Malta in my opinion is St John’s Co-Cathedral in Valletta. It is called “Co-Cathedral” because when the Knights arrived there was already a cathedral –St Paul’s--in Mdina , the old capital, inland due west of Valletta. The Knights were certainly not content for “their” church to be less in status than a cathedral so the Pope at the time, ever the pragmatist, allowed Malta to have two “co-cathedrals”.

I honestly can say I have never seen such a spectacular church as St John’s Co-Cathedral in Valletta ---and I’ve seen a lot over the last 40 or more years! The Knights and the aristocratic families from which they came were all fabulously wealthy, but because the Knights were supposed to be a holy Order they weren’t supposed to spend their money on the normal frivolities (although I am sure that many did), and so they poured their money into glorifying their “langue” and themselves and  improving their prospects for the after-life with paintings, statues, gold and marble in the cathedral. 

And so the cathedral is a dazzling blaze of colour, marble and gold leaf. Words don’t do it justice. I’ve included a few photos which also don’t do it justice. Definitely put it on your bucket list.

In addition to the cathedral itself where you can take photos, there is the Treasury with fabulous gold and silver plate and massive illuminated manuscripts, and the Oratory with two sublime paintings by Caravaggio, the “Beheading of John the Baptist” and St Jerome” which he painted while in Malta. 

Caravaggio apparently was a rake and a hothead and while he was on the run from some other “incident” he spent a bit of time in Malta trying to become a knight. However he was soon thrown out for duelling and womanising and spent the rest of his life on the run. But Malta has benefited enormously from the two paintings he did while there. Pity you can’t take photos of them.



The incredible gold and paintings in the Knights cathedral of St John in Valletta



Memorial stones made of rare coloured marble in the floor of  St John's Co-Cathdral

Have you ever seen so much gold?

One of the side-chapels in St John's. Each "langue" had its own chapel and each langue vied with the others to have the most fabulously decorated chapel

The main altar

The frescoed ceiling

And on and on.....

World War II museums

Whether or not you are a military history buff you should visit the World War II museum “Malta at War” in Birgu (also known as Vittorioso), one of the Three Cities on the peninsulas on the south side of the Grand Harbour, facing Valletta across the harbour. There are plenty of other World War II excavations and tunnels and museums on the islands, but the Malta at War one was certainly the best I saw.

The museum is built into the massively thick limestone fortifications that ring all the Three Cities and Valletta. (I was impressed that Malta generally does not “dumb down” its museums. The displays are well labelled and informative. The museums also provide excellent audio guides free as part of the admission charge . )

The Malta at War museum itself provides not only a fine evocation of the ghastly experience of Malta during the siege and bombardment in World War II (including showing an excellent documentary made in January 1943 with rare news reel footage from the siege and bombardment itself and narrated by Laurence Olivier),  but it also goes into the pre-war divided loyalties of some Maltese who had previously felt so close to Italy and were often educated there, as well as developments in the post war period up to Malta’s eventual independence.

The highlight for many though is a set of stone stairs descending into the bowels of the limestone beneath the museum. There,  are a maze of tunnels dug as air raid shelters where the population of Birgu could retreat, often several times a day during the height of the bombing. Off to either side of the tunnels small rooms have been hollowed out where families could gather and shelter---some have even put tiles on the floor and decorations and religious symbols on the walls. This complex also had an emergency medical facility and a “birthing room” for women whose babies arrived during an air raid.

One of the many World War II air raid shelters carved out of the limestone under houses and streets and public buildings where the people of Malta could shelter during the over 3000 air raids on the island between 1940 and 1943.

Stone Age Malta

This brings me to what was probably the highlight of my visit to Malta—the extraordinary Stone Age remnants both above and underground. No one knows quite where these people came from in about 5000 BC (probably Italy) or why they disappeared after 2500 years or so (maybe died off because of lack of water), leaving the island apparently unoccupied for another 500 years or so before new bronze age immigrants arrived, probably also from Italy, and then the Phoenicians from the Middle East and then the Romans and then the Arabs (probably from North Africa).  Each group has left some traces but the remains of the Stone Age civilisation was for me the most fascinating.

Unlike Stone Age peoples whose artefacts and structures are found elsewhere in the world (such Stonehenge built a thousand years later), the Stone Age occupants of Malta developed remarkably sophisticated stone-masonry techniques executed with considerable artistry as well. 

No doubt they were helped in this by the nature of the limestone of which Malta is made and which is much more easily carved than, say, granite.  They worked both the softer honey-coloured globigerina limestone and the harder greyer coralline limestone. The former was used the most but it erodes more easily and so the structures and carvings in globigerina are not as well preserved as the coralline structures. 

That is, except for the Hypogeum which was discovered in the early twentieth century under some nineteenth century suburban villas outside Valletta (see below)

An example of the massive stone blocks of which these temples were built. These blocks have not just been piled up, but rather have been carefully shaped and carved to fit together to form the structure. So sophisticated and skilful for stone age people 7000 years ago.

Ggantija

Not only has the weather done damage to the Stone Age structures but also people, both locals and tourists. As it happens, most of these structures are in populated areas (presumably the current centres of population were built where people had been living for thousands of years and spread from there) and so one can imagine later farmers catching their ploughs on stone age temple stones or developers clearing a site for new building.

But possibly the most glaring is the damage done to the huge temple of Ggantija on the island of Gozo. This temple had the misfortune to be “discovered” by wealthy European young men on the “Grand Tour” in the seventeen hundreds and military officers and wealthy adventurers in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. So it became a “must see” place to visit.

This was of course before the days of government control over national monuments, and over the centuries stones were removed and sold to visitors as souvenirs and the large temple stones knocked over to make a picturesque place to sit. Local legend had it that the Ggantija temple had been built by a race of giants (hence its name) and it wasn’t until the early twentieth century that its true origins were recognised.

However it is true that these early wealthy tourists were not ordinary vandals. They knew they were seeing something ancient whether or not they bought into the race of giants myth, and many of them (particularly the British military officers) were accomplished amateur painters. 

So there exists a lot of descriptions in personal travel journals and water-colour painting, and later, early photographs of Ggantija from the eighteenth century onwards. 

Some of these are well displayed in the excellent visitors’ centre that has recently been built in the now-well protected Ggantija site. This gives a much better idea of what the site really looked like and also shows how much damage can be done when people don’t appreciate the need to preserve things for the future.



Ggantija is the first of the prehistoric sites that was discovered in the 18th century and was originally thought by the locals to have been built by a race of giants, hence the name.

Ggantija is made of coralline limestone, which is not as pretty as the honey-coloured globigerina limestone, but much harder and less easily weathered than the globigerina. It looks like the coral of which it is actually formed, with thousands of tiny holes in it.

wooden walkways have been installed to prevent visitors from climbing over the stones and wearing down the ancient paving stones. The scaffolding does not signify that repairs are under way but is to stop any further deterioration in the structure until archaeologists have decided what is the best way to repair or renovate the walls so that further deterioration does not occur but also so as not to make the structure an artificial pastiche of what it used to be.

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The Museum of Archaeology

In many of the Stone Age sites the originals of the smaller and more elaborately carved and decorated objects have been removed and replaced on site with replicas. The originals were moved to The Museum of Archaeology in Valletta in the twentieth century for safekeeping. 

This was really wise because when you see the originals in the museum and then the reproductions on site you can see how much the copies have been eroded by the weather and environmental pollution in less than a hundred years. The Museum has an excellent display and their explanatory signage is also very informative. 

If you are going to see the Stone Age sites it is useful to have visited the Museum display first so you can put the sites in context.

The original of this remnant of a female figure is in the Museum and this is a copy, much more weathered than the original in the museum

This fascinating "ancient architectural blueprint" carved in stone is in the museum. And shows the likely "beehive" style if roof which no doubt topped all of the temple buildings but which have long since fallen in.

Tarxien temple complex

There are plenty of other Stone Age sites scattered over Malta and Gozo, some better preserved and displayed than others. I also visited the Tarxien Temples in the heavily urbanised outskirts of Valletta. It is now fenced off but is surrounded by ugly tenement buildings and industrial debris.  

It is the largest temple site with 4 different temples built over about a 1000 year period between 3600 BC and 2500 BC. It was then later used as a cremation site in the Bronze Age. The state of preservation is not great, but the size of the complex shows what an important site it was over thousands of years.

This is part of the Tarxien temple ruins, the first one on the island of Malta to be unearthed. As you can see it is smack in the middle of a dreary suburban industrial and housing estate

More of the Tarxien temple complex which shows the common pattern of semi-circular apses of which each temple had three or four or more. Also  note the huge stones used for the doorway.

Another view of the Tarxien complex. Note the paving slabs which were used to mark the approach to the temple doorways---a sort of "red carpet" approach

Note the swirls of decoration on the veneer of stone on this hollow stone "box". Was it a chest to keep the sacred implements and clothing for the priests to use in ceremonies 7000 years ago?

Mnajdia and Hagar Quin

These two sites are on the west coast and these are the best preserved and cared for of all the Malta above-ground Stone Age structures. One is built of soft globigerina limestone and the other  which is about 100 meters further down the steep cliff is made of coralline limestone. 

No one knows why the different building materials were chosen for sites so close together, probably either because the different stone was more conveniently located to be quarried for that particular location, or maybe because the Stone Age builders realised that the coralline limestone was tougher and would last better on the windswept cliff .

Both sites have been subject to careful preservation and are now covered over with huge tent-like canopies to protect them from the sun and wind and rain. There is also a good visitor centre with explanatory exhibits. (By the way all of this restoration has been paid for with grants from the EU---I guess the EU is good for something after all J)

The well-preserved Mnajdia covered temple entrance. Those stones are massive!

Note the tent-like roof which has been erected to preserve Mnajdia from further weathering

This hole has been carved out of a block of limestone. Because of the threshold in front of it it must have been a doorway into a special part of the temple.

Note the sophisticated carved pedestal or stool or altar.

You can see from the signboard in from how huge this rock is.

This is the temple Hagar Quin a couple of hundred metres down the cliff from Mnajdia.It is made of coralline limestone, much harder but with holes in it like coral

A complex and very well preserved part of Hagar Quin

“Clapham Junction”

Another kind of ancient find that has been located in more recent years  are cart ruts carved by the wear of wheels or runners into the stone.

They still don’t know when these were formed, whether in the Bronze Age or earlier or even later in the Middle Ages—or why. These tracks have been found in places all over the islands but the most well-known ones are the ones at so-called “Clapham Junction” in south west Malta. You can tell from the name the nationality of the leading authority on this site!

Clapham Junction is found in a large stretch of stony open country and scrub land with isolated farm buildings. It is not marked at all well so you really have to have read up about the cart ruts before arriving at the site. There is also a short film about them in the Museum of Archaeology in Valletta.

The ruts criss-cross each other (hence the nick-name Clapham Junction) and are of varying depths but all seem to have been made by some sort of heavy wheeled cart or perhaps the runners of a sled. And are all seem to have the same wheelbase gauge of 1.4 metres but there are no signs of wear in between the tracks which would indicate that they were drawn by a horse bullock or anything other than a bare-foot man. Very strange. 

"Clapham Junction" is a maze of criss-crossing ruts, clearly made by some man-made device, a sled or cart of something, but when and what for is a mystery.

The ruts vary in depth but all are the same width between the ruts --1.4 metres--so it must have been a moveable cart or sled of some sort

Hypogeum

But the highlight of the Stone Age discoveries has to be the underground temple and burial complex called the Hypogeum, which was found in the early twentieth   century by builders constructing houses above. 

In fact it was found when they were putting in the underground water cisterns which were compulsory for houses in towns and cities at the time (see earlier what I have said about the lack of water on Malta) and in the work-men’s excavation work they broke through into the temple complex, deep below. 

At first they thought that this was a Roman structure---by then the Roman catacombs around Mdina had already been located and identified. However it was soon realised that the Hypogeum was far far older than that.

Entry to the Hypogeum (which is via a hard-to-find, unremarkable-looking suburban row-house south of Valletta) is by timed ticket only and you need to buy the tickets on-line in advance. The website seems to say permanently that all tickets are sold out! However there are two unassigned time slots for which a limited number of tickets are sold the day before on a first come first serve basis at the National Museum of Fine Arts in Valletta, which is what I did. 

No photos are allowed unfortunately, you are confined to set walk-ways with a guard/guide with a torch with you at all times, and the lighting is only turned on for a few minutes when you come to the points of interest.  But it is a remarkable place. 

It seems that the underground temple complex was carved on a similar floor plan as the temples above ground (with a series of apses and altars.

And the ceilings are carved into a beehive shape, which helped archaeologists to realise that the above ground temples around Malta and Gozo must also have had stone roofs built of an ascending tapered series of squared off stones, with each layer slightly indented until   they met at the roof. 

Remarkably sophisticated architecture for the Stone Age. The stone roofs for the above-ground temples have long since collapsed and the stones have vanished (probably to become building materials for later peoples). But the carved roofs in the Hypogeum have shown archaeologists what they must have been like.  

The Hypogeum also served as a burial chamber and estimates put the numbers of Stone Age people buried there at 7000! Of course it was in use for over 1000 years from about 3600 BC to about 2500 BC.  

Apparently the upper level was later used as a burial chamber by Bronze Age people who migrated to Malta after the Stone Age people had died out. These Bronze Age people and the Phoenicians who came after them cremated their dead and cremated  remains need very little space so there is very little evidence of their existence, either at the Hypogeum or anywhere else on Malta. 

Funny, isn’t it, how a culture’s burial traditions can have a dramatic effect on their architecture and the historical traces they leave behind for us?

NO PICTURES ALLOWED :(

Gozo

I spent three days in Gozo and frankly it was the most disappointing of the trip (except for the excellent Ggantija of course—see above). The whole centre of the island where the main city Rabat and the ancient citadel rock are located is completely inaccessible to visitors because of road construction and major restoration of the citadel.  

Because of the road construction and lack of signage it took me 2 hours to get to my hotel at the north-west end of the island, a trip that should have taken me 20 minutes maximum.

My detours to try to find my way did, however, show me the rest of the island including the salt pans on the northern coast and some of the villages and the enormous churches (see above). The most interesting thing I saw on that drive was the vast Roman aqueduct, but it is not really accessible and is much decayed.  I had been led to believe that Gozo was an idyllic quiet rural island. I didn’t find it so at all. 

The most interesting thing (aside from Ggantija which is of course amazing) I did on Gozo was visit the far north western tip where the popular tourist spot of the Azure Window is found. This is a  natural arch (of the kind that are found all over the world wherever karst or limestone is the predominant rock). It is in a promontory of rock sticking out into the sea with a hole, the so called “Azure Window”, carved in it by the waves.

All the tourist brochures show it bright sunshine with blue sky and flat sea and little boats taking tourists out to see it. Not a bit of it when I was there! There was a wild and stormy sea and spray leaping hundreds of feet in the air. There was an unfenced stretch of flat rocks reaching out into the sea and splashed and washed by the waves. Needless to say many tourists walked out on these flat rocks to get wet in the spray (not me!).According to the newspapers the next day two tourists were washed out to sea and drowned in separate incidents a few hours after I was there.

The far west coast of Gozo where the limestone cliffs have been battered and eroded by the waves, tide and wind.



This stretch of flat limestone leads invitingly down to the sea. But on this day the sea was wild and crashing over the flat rocks. Tourists however persisted in walking down to the edge to feel the spray. Two tourists were washed out to sea and drowned a few hours after I was there.



This is the so-called Azure Window at the far western tip of Gozo. One fine days in summer little boats take tourists out into the sea and through the Azure Window. Not when I was there in February! The sea was wild and any attempt to go out in a boat would have meant certain death.



This is taken a few seconds after the previous photo so you can see the wild spray being funelled up several hundred feet through the Azure Window.

The cities

The main cities are Valletta and Mdina on Malta and Rabat on Gozo.  But first a word about the “Three Cities”—that is the name in the guide books but you never see that on a road sign so I guess it is just a term for the tourists.

The “Three Cities”

The so-called “Three Cities” of Birgu, L’Isla and Bormla are older than Valletta but were left to decline gently into obscurity after the Great Siege in 1565 when the Knights built the easier-to-defend new capital city of Valletta high on a flat-topped peninsula across the Grand Harbour from the Three Cities. 

I found L’Isla and Birgu quite charming. Bormla, protected by the massive fortified wall of the “Margarita Lines”, was under scaffolding and seemingly inaccessible because of renovation and construction—like many historic parts of Malta. A good thing for historic preservation and future visitors, but not so good for me!

Birgu, the middle of the three adjacent peninsulas on which the Three Cities were built, is the most prosperous and lively of the Three Cities, and a large number of the lovely four and five storey rows of centuries-old limestone houses and mansions have been restored to single family homes or quality apartments without losing their original features. 

A typical feature of traditional Maltese houses is a narrow balcony enclosed by green-painted wooden shutters with slits in them . This provided a shelter for the women of the house where they could sit, protecting their complexions and their modesty, sheltered from the hot rays of the sun, and still peek out into the goings on in the street below.

There is a very fine marina surrounding Birgu and a few of the traditional Maltese oared fishing boats can be seen, no doubt now collectors’ items. Birgu also has the World War II museum I mentioned earlier and the Inquisitors mansion and several other museums. 

You can walk all around the perimeter of the peninsula on a esplanade and the views over the Grand Harbour are stunning particularly at sunset. 

I got the impression Birgu  was considered a desirable place to live today,  perhaps a preserve of the wealthy Maltese business and professional classes, close enough to the capital of Valletta but also with its own character---sort of like Hampstead in London.

L’Isla is similar in age to Birgu and the narrow steep streets and rows of limestone houses with balconies are the same, but it has yet to be “discovered” I think. The houses are shabby and unrestored and there are no museums or tourist attractions. I’d like to come back in 20 years and see if it has taken off like Birgu has and become a desirable residential area—property speculators, take note!

I also should mention that to the north of Valletta along the east coast are a series of more modern towns, where most tourists stay and where all the shops, bars and entertainments are. Not for me, especially in the wet weather, the appalling driving and the interminable road construction! 

These green painted enclosed balconies are so typical of Malta and Gozo. They are still included in new buildings too. They were originally so that the ladies could sit on them and watch the world go by without exposing their skin to the rays of the sun or attracting lascivious attention from male passers-by, particularly the soldiers and sailors no doubt.

And this is interior of one of those balconies--not much space as you can see.

One of the narrow streets of Birgu

Looking from the walls of Birgu across to the next peninsula. Notice how all the walls are thick limestone for protection from invaders.

 

The Marina between L'Isla and Birgu

As you can see each of the Three Cities and Valletta also, are on peninsulas surrounded by water

The Grand Harbour

Plenty of pussy cats on Birgu

This was in a museum but many of these sturdy limestone half-cellars and rooms built into the ramparts  are found throughout Malta

Valletta

Valletta, as mentioned already, is the capital city and the city most visited by tourists. It is where all the government buildings, the principal museums, historic buildings and churches, and art galleries and shops and restaurants are. And yet by world standards of capital cities it is tiny---just 1000 metres by 600 metres and with less than 6000 inhabitants.

It is probably one of the most charming capital cities in the world. Although there was some architectural vandalism in the 1960s and 1970s as there was all over the world, most of that has been removed or repaired sympathetically but not as a pastiche of the past. For example the lovely nineteenth century opera house which was badly bombed in World War II has been left with the old facade and a few columns but the remainder has been turned into an outdoor theatre space—after all the weather in Malta is such that it is practical to have an outdoor theatre, which would be useless in a rainy or snowy country. 

The massive ramparts at the entrance to the city have been restored and the 1960s brutalist entrance replaced with a simple, unobtrusive and modernly sympathetic drawbridge. 

Valletta is very much a lived-in city and as you wander the quieter streets, constructed on a grid pattern, you find the old buildings used as normal tenement-type housing with children playing in the streets and little local grocery shops. 

In fact Valletta is a lovely place for wandering, although you may find the narrow steep streets, some of which are so steep they are stone staircases, rather tiring. 

For a change from the grand museums and historic buildings and churches (fine as they certainly are) you might try the Casa Rocca Piccola, a 1580s palazzo  built for and still occupied by a series of noble Maltese families. The current owners and occupiers are the family of the Marquis de Piro. 

The tour gives a fascinating insight into the domestic life of the wealthy Maltese aristocracy, both past and present. You are also shown the fabulous old water cistern carved out of the soft limestone beneath the house and the tunnels and chambers leading to it which were the air raid shelters for the neighbourhood in World War II.

Ceremonial guns fired from the battlements of Valletta across the Grand Harbour towards the Three Cities.

Being the capital of Malta, Valletta has many fine buildings from all eras, including buildings which used to be "langues" of the Knights of Malta

Many of the buildings in Valletta are nineteenth century but have been built in a very harmonious way so as to blend in with the older buildings. The green balconies add a unifying touch to the street scenes.

Valletta has many pedestrianized streets and mostly local traffic and so the streets are very pleasant to wander around.

This was the nineteenth century opera house which was bombed during World War II. Rather than replacing it  with another building the architect has preserved the ruins and built an open air theatre inside. In the benign Maltese climate an outdoor theatre is quite practical.

It has not been called "Fortress Malta" for nothing! Every coastal city is surrounded by thick fortified walls. This leads to some of the ramparts of Valletta.

This is inside one of the water storage cisterns which were required to be built under every house, since Malta relied exclusively on rain water. Limestone is the perfect material for a cistern--easily carved and with porous walls to absorb and retain the water to a volume far in excess of the size of the cistern itself.

The Citadel and Rabat, Gozo

I am afraid I did not come away with a good impression of Rabat and the old Citadel in Gozo. Most of it was entirely inaccessible to visitors because of construction and renovations. Maybe if I go back in the future I might give it another try.

Mdina

Finally, the oldest city on Malta, Mdina, and its venerable suburb of Rabat –(in case you are confused as I was, apparently “Rabat” means “suburb” so that is why there is a Rabat on Gozo which is the centuries old suburb of the Citadel of Gozo, and the other Rabat is the ancient suburb  of Mdina which has been there since at least Roman times). 

Mdina is situated on the edge of a 150 metre high plateau overlooking the whole of countryside to the east. But because it is vulnerable from the western sea side it was not as easy to defend as Valletta and so the Knights made Valletta their capital and Mdina and its suburb of Rabat gently declined, although it remained ( and I think still is) a favoured residence of the Maltese aristocracy.

Mdina has been occupied since at least the Bronze Age and was expanded into what is now Rabat in Roman times when it was known as Melite. But it was renamed Mdina, heavily fortified,  and reduced to the smaller area during Arab occupation in the 8^th and 9^th centuries.  

After the Arabs left it entered a golden age during the middle ages when the aristocracy built their grand mansions (palazzi ). And then when the Knights arrived it entered its period of decline and many of its buildings fell into disrepair.  It suffered very badly in an earthquake in 1693 and so any of the grand palazzi  had to be rebuilt. 

Today many of the palazzi have medieval foundations and ground floors but seventeenth century structures on top. Today there are only 400 people who actually live in the fortified city but of course many more come in from Rabat to work there since there are many religious and governmental institutions have establishments in Mdina itself.

I stayed in the Xara Palace hotel, which is right inside the old walled city of Mdina itself. It is supposed to be the best hotel in Malta and is certainly priced that way. Well, hmmm... 

But it certainly was wonderful to be inside the walled city where you could wander the ancient narrow streets where there are no cars, before the large tour groups arrived and also later after they had left. And my room had a terrace outside looking over the battlements to the panorama of the whole of central Malta as far as Valletta on the east coast.

 I visited St Paul’s Co-cathedral (see what I said earlier about the pragmatic solution which a sixteenth century pope found, by the Knights new church of St John in Valletta a “Co-cathedral” with the existing St Paul’s Cathedral in Mdina!) 

St Paul’s is much smaller but also lavishly decorated inside  with lots of coloured marble and gold leaf, although not of course quite as fine as St John’s in Valletta on which the Knights lavished their incredible wealth. 

A lot of the fine treasures were looted by Napleon’s troops as well. In fact it was the greed of the French troops in looting the religious treasures of Mdina’s cathedral and monasteries that finally caused the locals to rebel and throw out the French, and welcoming the British instead!

Unfortunately not all that many of the historical monasteries and palazzi were open to the public when I was there (off season?) so I mostly had to content myself with wandering the cobbled streets and admiring them from the outside. 

In contrast to the grid pattern of Valletta, Mdina’s streets were deliberately built on a zig-zag pattern with many right-angled corners, so that invaders who got that far would get lost. I did visit the private Palazzo Falson, built as was common with a central courtyard with galleries around the edges off which the rooms opened. It has a marvellous collection of antique rugs, paintings, silver and furniture.

I then ventured through the narrow gateways in the fortifications and over the drawbridge and into Rabat. Just outside the walls of Mdina is the Domus, the remains of a Roman villa with fine mosaics and a few excellent pieces of statuary which have been salvaged. 

Despite Malta being an important part of the Roman Empire and well populated at the time—Cicero apparently stayed in Mdina for a while-- remarkably little remains above ground from that period. Probably looted and destroyed by the Arab invaders from North Africa who carried away the Roman treasure as booty.

However below ground the tale is different. Underground Rabat is riddled with Roman catacombs, the largest and best displayed (with an excellent audio guide) is St Paul’s Catacombs. But you do have to be fairly fit to clamber down and around them. 

This site has an excellent audio guide as well which guides you to the different types of Roman tomb—floor grave, window grave, arcosolium (an arched recess), table grave ( like a stone box, bench grave, canopied grave, loculus (a rectangular recess cut into the wall ). I guess it depended on your status and wealth as well as the fashion at the time.

Another important site, especially if you are a Roman Catholic, is St Paul’s grotto. The legend is that St Paul was shipwrecked here on his voyage from Palestine to Italy and for three months meditated in an underground grotto, said to be under what is now called St Paul’s church in Rabat. So over the centuries the grotto has been a place of pilgrimage for the faithful and it is de rigueur for every pope to visit at least once. 

Nearby is the vast Wigancourt museum which is an interesting structure (formerly a religious college for priests) but with an underwhelming collection of odds and ends and some good –and bad---paintings. However under it is another rabbit warren of World War II bomb shelters, running into Roman catacombs.

Roofs and towers in the old city of Medina

St Paul's Cathedral in Mdina, smaller and somewhat less ornate than its "co-cathedral" in Valletta.



Another street scene in Mdina--all the streets are very narrow and so only residents can drive in the city and then only at night.



Mdina streets are narrow with sharp corners and zigzags---this was to make it easier to confuse and repel any enemy invader

This is one of only two entrance gates to Mdina!

The well preserved mosaic floor of one of the Roman villas of which there used to be many in Mdina. It is not clear why there are so few Roman remains despite Malta being a thriving Roman colony. Perhaps the later Arab invaders from North Africa looted and destroyed everything?

The fascinating Roman catacombs which riddle the underground of the suburbs of Mdina.

The Romans had the rather macabre custom of having a funerary meal at a table like this when a relative was buried and on the anniversaries of the death.

The Romans had many different types of burial chambers

Some of these niches are from later Phoenician--they had the custom of cremating rather than burying their dead. it is common in Malta to see the same space both above ground and underground re-used over the centuries. So underground Roman catacombs merge into earlier Stone Age temples and later domestic water cisterns and even later World War II air raid shelters.

Final word

If you have waded through this far you will have got the clear impression that I am recommending Malta for a visit. You’re right. Do not be put off by Malta’s current ghastly reputation for being a cheap package holiday destination like Spain or Ibiza. It is so much more than that. I do suggest you go off season and steer clear of the touted tourist sites like the Azure Window and the Blue Grotto or theme parks like the Popeye Village—even off-season they attract crowds of holiday makers. Buy a good guide book (you can’t go wrong with the Bradt one) and rent a car and tootle around  to see what takes your fancy. Above all, regardless of what your interests are, don’t miss St John’s Co-Cathedral in Valletta.