Showing 1-22 of 22 results
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Armoury
From the public entry to the Grand Master's Palace on Triq il-Merkanti it's possible to visit the Armoury (and the State Apartments). Heritage Malta conducts guided tours (included in the cost of admission) of the Armoury daily; tours and times are not set in stone, so it may be worth making advance enquiries.
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Auberge de Castille
On Pjazza Kastilja, pause to admire the façade of the Auberge de Castille, designed by the architect Andrea Belli in 1741. It adorns a 16th-century building that was once the home of the Spanish and Portuguese langue of the Knights of St John, but now houses the offices of the Maltese prime minister (not open to the public).
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Casa Rocca Piccola
The 16th-century palazzo Casa Rocca Piccola is the elegant family home of the Marquis de Piro. The marquis has opened part of the palazzo to the public and guided tours give an unique insight into the privileged lifestyle of the aristocracy.
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Cathedral Museum
The first bay in the south aisle of St John's Co-Cathedral gives access to the Cathedral Museum. The first room is the Oratory, built in 1603 as a place of worship and for the instruction of novices. It is dominated by the altarpiece the Beheading of St John the Baptist (c 1608) by Caravaggio, one of the artist's most famous and accomplished paintings.
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Church of St Paul's Shipwreck
In AD 60 St Paul was shipwrecked on Malta and brought Christianity to the population. The moody Church of St Paul's Shipwreck dates from the 16th century and houses many treasures, including a dazzling gilded statue of St Paul, carved in Rome in 1650s and carried shoulder-high through Valletta's streets on the saint's feast day (10 February). There's also a golden reliquary containing some bones from the saint's wrist, and part of the column on which he is said to have been beheaded in Rome.
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Fort St Elmo
At the furthest point of Valletta and guarding the entrance to both Marsamxett and Grand Harbours is Fort St Elmo, named after the patron saint of mariners. Although now much altered and extended, this was the fort that bore the brunt of Turkish arms during the Great Siege of 1565. It was built by the Knights in 1552 to guard the entrances to the harbours on either side of the Sceberras Peninsula. The courtyard outside the entrance to the fort is studded with the lids of underground granaries.
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Grand Master's Palace
The 16th-century Grand Master's Palace , once the residence of the Grand Masters of the Knights of St John, is today the seat of Malta's parliament and the official residence of the Maltese president.
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Great Siege of Malta & the Knights of St John
One heavily promoted exhibition is the Great Siege of Malta & the Knights of St John , beside the entry to the Bibliotheca on Misraħ ir-Repubblika. It advertises a 'state-of-the-art 3D walk-through adventure' but quite frankly doesn't live up to the hype. For the steep admission fee you get a 45-minute, sometimes-tedious self-guided audio tour through re-creations of battle scenes from the 1565 siege.
Read more about Great Siege of Malta & the Knights of St John
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Knights Hospitallers Exhibition
A pretty lacklustre Knights Hospitallers exhibition, with an entrance across the street from the Malta Experience, records the achievements of medieval medics. The surgeons performed advanced operations as well as the more routine amputations and treatment of war wounds.
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Lascaris War Rooms
WWII history boffins should make time to visit the Lascaris War Rooms. These chambers, hewn out of the solid rock beneath Lascaris Bastion, housed the headquarters of the Allied air and naval forces during WWII, and were used as the control centre for Operation Husky, the Allied invasion of Sicily in 1943.
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Lower Barrakka Gardens
The Lower Barrakka Gardens contains a little Doric temple commemorating Sir Alexander Ball, the naval captain who took Malta from the French in 1800.
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Manoel Theatre
The 600-seat Manoel Theatre , Malta's national theatre, was built in 1731 and is one of the oldest theatres in Europe. Take an entertaining guided tour (conducted in English, French, Italian and German) to see the restored baroque auditorium with its gilt boxes and huge chandelier. Tickets include admission to the theatre's small museum.
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National Museum of Archaeology
Housed in the Auberge de Provence, the National Museum of Archaeology is well worth a visit, despite the fact that it is still undergoing renovation and expansion (long past its scheduled completion date). At the time of research only the galleries on the ground floor (detailing the early Neolithic and Temple periods, c 5200 to 2500 BC) were open.
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National Museum of Fine Arts
Occupying Admiralty House, Malta's National Museum of Fine Arts is a baroque palazzo that was used as the official residence of the Admiral Commander-in-Chief of the British Mediterranean Fleet from the 1820s until 1961. Lord Louis Mountbatten also had his headquarters here in the early 1950s.
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National War Museum
Commemorating the country's ordeal during WWII, Malta's National War Museum is housed in the northwest corner of Fort St Elmo. The collection of relics, photographs and equipment includes the Gloster Gladiator biplane called Faith (minus wings), the Jeep Husky used by General Eisenhower, and the wreckage of a Spitfire and a Messerschmitt Me-109 fighter aircraft recovered from the sea bed.
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Royal Opera House
On the main street, Triq ir-Repubblika you'll pass the cracked steps and shattered column stumps of the ruined Royal Opera House. This once imperious building was built in the 1860s, but was destroyed during a German air raid in 1942. Its gutted shell has been left as a reminder of the war and is rather unceremoniously used as a car park while controversy rages as to what should be done with the site. The most recent proposal is to transform the ruins into a permanent open-air performance space.
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St James' Cavalier Centre for Creativity
The St James' Cavalier has undergone a remarkable transformation from a 16th-century fortification into a bright, modern arts centre. Inside the St James' Cavalier Centre for Creativity are a couple of exhibition spaces (with a bias towards the contemporary art scene), a theatre-in-the-round where live music and theatre performances are held, and a cinema showing art-house films. It's worth stopping in to check out the interesting interior and to grab a programme of what's on.
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St John's Co-Cathedral
Malta's most impressive church, St John's Co-Cathedral was designed by the architect Gerolamo Cassar and built between 1573 and 1578 as the conventual church of the Knights of St John. It took over from the Church of St Lawrence in Vittoriosa as the place where the Knights would gather for communal worship. It was raised to a status equal to that of St Paul's Cathedral in Mdina - the official seat of the Archbishop of Malta - by a papal decree of 1816, hence the term 'co-cathedral'.
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State Apartments
From the public entry to the Grand Master's Palace on Triq il-Merkanti it's possible to visit the State Apartments; note that the apartments are closed from time to time when official state visits are taking place. Heritage Malta conducts guided tours (included in the cost of admission) of the apartments at , and daily; tours and times are not set in stone, so it may be worth making advance enquiries.
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Toy Museum
The small Toy Museum houses an impressive private collection of model planes and boats from the 1950s, as well as Matchbox cars, farmyard animals, train sets and dolls. The collection is generally in glass display cabinets, so this place is better suited to nostalgic adults than hyperactive ankle-biters.
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Upper Barrakka Gardens
The balcony at the Upper Barrakka Gardens provides a magnificent panorama of Grand Harbour and the creeks and dockyards of Vittoriosa and Senglea. Time your visit to coincide with the firing of the noon-day gun (a cannon fired at noon daily).
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Wartime Experience
The Wartime Experience is a worthwhile 45-minute show made up of archive film from WWII, which movingly records the ordeal suffered by the Maltese during the siege of 1940 to 1943. It's shown at the Embassy Cinemas inside the Embassy Complex daily at , , noon and .
Showing 1-22 of 22 results
