Malta historic buildings: forts, palaces, gates and towers

What Malta historic buildings offer

A visitor who expects temples and churches only finds, within a day, that the islands are built around defence. The Knights of St John arrived in 1530, survived the Great Siege of 1565 and then built a new city on a peninsula to make sure it never happened again. Their successors, the British, added batteries, lighthouses and gates over the next three centuries. What survives is a landscape of walls, towers and palaces, and nearly all of it can be visited or at least walked past.

This hub lists twenty-six places. Some are open to the public with tickets and tours. Others are residences, or buildings best seen from the outside, and a few are ruins that explain a moment in history by what is missing.

Valletta: the planned fortress capital

Fortifications of Valletta are the best introduction. The bastions and walls were planned after the Great Siege by Francesco Laparelli and Girolamo Cassar, and they enclose a city laid out on a grid. Inside are the Auberge de Castille, the Baroque seat of the Prime Minister at the city’s highest point, and the Main Guard, a guardhouse of 1603 with a neoclassical portico added by the British in 1814.

The entrances tell their own story. Valletta City Gate has been rebuilt five times since the 1560s, and the current gate by Renzo Piano opened in 2014 and is still debated by locals. Near it, the Royal Opera House Site is the ruined shell of a Victorian opera house bombed in 1942, now an open-air stage. At the water end, Fort St Elmo held out in 1565 and now houses the National War Museum.

Across the harbour: Birgu and the Three Cities

The Knights’ first base was Birgu, and its walls and gates show the earlier layer. Fort Saint Angelo sits at the tip, served as their headquarters in the Great Siege, and was restored by Heritage Malta and reopened in 2015. The Cottonera Lines and Gates are a long belt of bastions from 1670 that protect the three towns, with some gates still in use. Nearby, Fort Rinella is a Victorian artillery battery with a surviving 100-ton Armstrong gun, and its guides re-enact the crew’s routine.

Towers, lighthouses and long walls

Out in the countryside the buildings are smaller. The De Redin Towers ring the main island’s coast, and on Gozo the Lascaris Towers include Dwejra Tower and the red St Agatha’s Tower, with three open to visitors. Two lighthouses make good viewpoints: Delimara Lighthouse, a striped British-era tower with Malta’s only Fresnel lens, and Giordan Lighthouse above Għasri, an active light first lit in 1853.

The Victoria Lines run for twelve kilometres across northern Malta, a chain of forts and walls completed in 1897. They suit slow walks rather than a single stop. The Wignacourt Aqueduct and Towers bring a different kind of engineering: a sixteen-kilometre seventeenth-century water system built for Valletta, with arches still standing in Santa Venera and Birkirkara.

Palaces and country houses

The Knights and their families also built for comfort. San Anton Palace in Attard began as a Grand Master’s summer villa and is now the President’s residence, while its gardens stay open to walkers. Verdala Palace, a fortified hunting lodge in the Buskett woodland, is also a presidential residence, and Selmun Palace near Mellieħa was built to fund ransoms for captives. Most of these are admired from outside, so check access before travelling.

Small buildings worth a minute

Not everything needs a ticket. Porte des Bombes is a Baroque bastion gate built in 1720 on the main road into Valletta, with coats of arms, sculpture and two marble inscriptions, and it takes a few minutes to appreciate from the pavement. Victoria Gate is a Victorian harbour-side gate of 1885, named for Queen Victoria’s jubilee and lit at night since a restoration in 2010. On Manoel Island in Marsamxett Harbour, Fort Manoel in Gzira is a square Baroque fort of the Knights, started in 1723, abandoned in 1964 and restored in stages since 2001.

Further afield, the Lija Belvedere Tower is a neoclassical folly of 1857, left standing on a roundabout when a new road cut through the grounds of Villa Gourgion. Robert Samut Hall in Floriana began as a Methodist church of the 1880s and became a cultural centre in 1975, named after the composer of the national anthem.

How to choose and when to go

Pick a theme for the day. Valletta by foot suits morning, when the light is gentle and the bastions are cool. The harbour forts around Birgu reward an afternoon of their own. Towers and lighthouses are better as stops on a drive or a coastal walk, and the Victoria Lines belong to a day in the north.

Spring and autumn are the best seasons, because these buildings are exposed to sun and wind. In summer go early and carry water. Opening hours vary and some places close for events or restoration, so check the current times for each site. Wear flat shoes: the paving is old and uneven, and the ramparts have drops.