Malta

We decided during the winter, that this year, we would only go to places which could be reached from East Midlands airport. So here we are in Malta. We are staying in Sliema, across the water from the capital Valetta, and one fun thing is taking the ferry across. We have a magnificent view of Valetta, all pale honey coloured limestone, and with many church domes and towers. The biggest dome is not the cathedral, but a Marian church. The whole church is under the dome.

View of Valetta from our hotel room

Cranes. But a lot of the former Royal Naval dockyards are derelict.

It's a curious mixture of British and Mediterranean. All the locals speak English but Maltese all the time amongst themselves, and it is pretty impenetrable. It's mainly Arabic, but written in the Latin alphabet and with lots of loan words, chiefly, I think, Italian. Everyone speaks good English and lots of sentences in Maltese are peppered with English words and phrases. Then there are lots of shops from British chains, and the post boxes are British, and I have seen houses called Rob Roy, Ivanhoe, and Seaview. The houses look completely Mediterranean, though.  They go in for those big projecting square wooden windows. Actually a lot in Valetta are fairly new but in the old style, because Malta was so intensively bombed. I talked to two older ladies on the bus and they both said they are still affected by the raids. They can't bear loud noises and just freeze.

We went to the war museum, in the castle St Elmo. It was very interesting. St Elmo was actually captured by the Turks in 1565, and we saw the chapel where the last defenders died in front on the altar. 

Chapel of St Elmo.

But taking St Elmo was so costly that the Turks gave up, and didn't attempt the bigger fort, St Angelo. In fact the military architecture is just stunning. We've seen Badajoz and Pamplona, and Malta is just on a different scale. It is amazing. Our guidebook calls Valletta Liliputian, and I can see what they mean, but the fortresses and walls are more Brobdignagian.

Fortifications

Some of the museum was about the Great Siege and there was a lot on the Second World War, during which Malta became the most bombed place on earth. Amazingly, less than 2000 civilians died, thanks to the deep limestone cave air raid shelters. The Malta convoys were dealt with and on show was the last surviving Gloster Gladiator biplane, three of which were all the aircraft with which Malta was defended when Italy declared war.

St Angelo, with super yacht

The museum was very interesting, really quite moving and gave you a chance to have a good wander round St Elmo. St Angelo is being restored as Valetta is the European City of Culture next year, but it isn't open yet.

Valetta was a completely new town built after the Turkish siege, and named for the then Grand Master of the order. The church they built was named as equal to the church in Mdina which was the original seat of the bishop, so it’s called the Co Cathedral. Originally it was Renaissance with a stone coffered ceiling, and quite plain. But it got Baroqued. Now it's a riot of gilding and painting and coloured marble. The floor consists completely of grave slabs for various knights, all in different coloured marbles. They usually include a representation of angels trumpeting the dead knight's fame, his coat of arms, weapons, more angels and frequently skeletons or death with his scythe. There were a few wall monuments for knights, which seemed to be in competition for who could go furthest over the top in funerary sculpture. 

Knight's tombstone

The museum included two Caravaggios, which really are good although not at all cheerful, much more suitable for a church than a living room. They also had a bit of John the Baptist (an arm, I think, allegedly) but Napoleon helped himself to the jewelled reliquary and the ousted Grandmaster took the relic with him when he left the island. What happened to it afterwards I have no idea.  I have actually seen John the Baptist's head in the Ummayad mosque in Damascus. I'm about as convinced of the head's provenance as I am of that of the arm.

The palace of the Knight Commander is now the official residence of the president of Malta, but you can see some of the impressive renaissance rooms and there is a huge collection of armour and weapons. Each knight had to leave his armour and horses to the order. It’s very well displayed but obviously from a much more limited period than the Royal Armouries.

We had a thoroughly enjoyable walk around Birgu, which was the original village where the knights settled. Or Victoriosa as the knights renamed it. It's been really well restored and is quite smart. There's also a maritime museum, in the old Royal Navy Bakery, which is massive, and interesting in itself. We're staying in Sliema so it's easy and fun to get a ferry across to Valletta, and then cross Valletta to get another ferry round into Dockyard Creek. In Valletta you cross the Baraka gardens, which with Hastings gardens are about the only pretty spots of greenery on the entire island, and take a lift down to the water level, through the fortifications which here include an amazing chasm.

 

The auberge of the knights of Castile

We saw some of the auberges for the knights; there were several, one for each language group. The English one is small, the French one rather bigger and the Castilian one huge and elaborately decorated. There is a new city gate and Parliament building, whose architect is Renzo di Piano. Apparently they are controversial but I thought they worked. The Fine Art Museum is in an interesting old palazzo which I think had been used by the Royal Navy, but the contents weren't great. There were two different versions of Judith and Holofernes and I do like to see any of those, and there were quite a lot of pieces of impressive Maltese furniture. There is a plan for a new museum and it's very necessary. All the pictures needed cleaning and there was no climate control.

We did consider hiring a car for a day or two, but the buses are very easy to work, air conditioned and seem to go everywhere we want, so we took a bus to Golden Bay and I had a delightful morning swimming. There is very little sand in Malta except for this bay. The sea is very clear and warm and along the rocky edge of the bay there were lots of fish.

 

Golden Ba

Watchtower. They are at regular
and frequent intervals all around
the coast.

Another day we took a bus to the neolithic site of Hagar Qim. Buses allow both of us to see the landscape and are less stressful than the driving through towns which one is really all the time. There are only tiny bits of countryside - it's nearly all urban, and the traffic is really heavy. They are very big on dry stone walls, stone being about the only commodity Malta is not short of, and there are little garden size plots, mostly tilled but fallow, and some with melons, courgette, dwarf beans and occasionally lettuce. There is a shallow valley on the way to Golden Bay which the guide book tells us is fertile, but the difficulty for British people is that it doesn’t look it, compared to almost anywhere in England. The main let down for Malta is that the food isn't very interesting. It's nearly all pasta, pizza, and burgers. Fish is expensive and doesn't look appetising. We did find a Maltese restaurant which was a pleasant place but the food is pretty solid and unsophisticated, much more solid than we fancy in this heat. The only really Maltese specialities seem to be rabbit, and various sweet pastries. Apparently the knights had to replace each galley every five years, so God knows where they got the wood for that.

Hagar Qim and the site next door, Mnajdra, are fantastic. They are dated about 3500BC.They are built from dry laid limestone blocks, and consist of a sort of entrance hall with chambers off, through “porthole” doors. These are a thinnish large oblong slab, which has an oblong hole cut into it, big enough for a person to pass through. There are also holes in the slabs which seem to indicate that there was a door or curtain of some sort over the entrances. 

Porthole door

Many of the stones were decorated by pitting or by spirals, and some statues were found, representing obese figures. It's not clear whether they are men or women, but there are some clay statuettes which are clearly female.  The hands are all positioned the same way which suggests it meant something, as it does in Hindu statuary. The limestone is quite soft and weathers easily, so the temples are covered by huge awnings to keep off the sun and rain. It's a shame but obviously necessary.

 

The middle altar, if that's what it was, is lit by the sun's
rays at dawn at each equinox. The slabs to right and
left are lit on the summer and winter solstices.

After the site visit we went to the Museum of Archaeology, which is in the Auberge of the Knights of Provence, which I assume covered all those who spoke Catalan. It's pretty large and has an impressive painted entrance hall, but it was the exhibits which were really interesting. There's another Temple cum burial place, the Hypogeum, which is closed for restoration, and on show were some of the findings. It was all very sophisticated for such an early culture.  It made the visit to Malta worthwhile in itself, I think.

When we left Hagar Qim, we could hear rolls of thunder and large drops of rain were beginning. So we got on the first bus that came along and went to Mdina. Mdina, as the name suggests, has Arab walls, and many large houses and is a very pleasant place to wander round.  Then, as we were on the bus to Sliema, luckily, the heavens opened and turned the roads into rivers. We ran into the hotel, but our shoes were soaked. I’ve never seen so much water fall in such a short period.

All in all, Malta was a really interesting place to go for a few days, and we enjoyed ourselves, but we’ve seen it now, and unlike Crete (or Northumberland, come to that) I don’t think we’ll return. One thing that made us smile was that while we were waiting at the airport, we were subjected to the Game of Thrones theme for ages.  But apparently GOT has increased tourism to Northern Ireland massively, so it's understandable.