Docked at Valletta Port

Latitude 35.89 Degrees North and
Longitude 14.51 Degrees East

April 24th & 25th, 2018

Weather: Very Sunny With Light Breeze and High of 74 Degrees With Low Humidity

Author: Don

We docked overnight at Valletta, capital of the archipelago nation of Malta.  This is one of the few stops during this long trip that we have visited previously.  But we very much enjoyed our stop here again.  (This time we spent two days in port because the extra day was added when our stop in Tunisia was cancelled due to political instability there.) 

Positioned at the center of the Mediterranean Sea, Malta has an interesting, long history of being coveted and controlled for its strategic location by various foreign powers, including the Phoenicians, the Carthaginians, the Romans and the Byzantines.  In 60 A.D. St. Paul was shipwrecked on Malta and brought Christianity to the island.  Arabs conquered the islands in 870 A.D. and left a lasting influence on the language of Malta.  Considered part of Sicily until 1530, Malta was controlled by the Normans and Aragonese.  In 1530, Malta was bequeathed to the Military Order Of Saint John Of Jerusalem and these Knights took Malta through a golden age during the next few centuries.

In the morning of our first day in Malta, we explored scenic Valletta on our own.  Valletta proper is a small city and great for walking.  We visited the Baroque St. John's Co-Cathedral.  (It shares cathedral status with another church on the island.)   It was fascinating to see the over-the-top ornate decorations, including the inlaid marble tombstone marking in the floor marking the resting places of over 400 Malta Knights.  In the afternoon, we took a bus tour to Palazzo Parisio in the town of Naxxar.  It was originally built by one of Malta's nobles who died shortly after it was built and bequeathed it to his servants.  Eventually, it was sold to Marquis Giuseppe Scicluna in 1898.  Scicluna was a wealthy banker and merchant, who eventually founded the company that brews Cisk Beer, Malta's most popular local beer.  He extensively renovated the palace and it is still preserved by his granddaughter in this pristine condition.

On our way back to Valletta, we stopped to go inside the amazing Rotunda Church of the town of Mosta, which has a massive dome and can seat many thousands of worshippers.  The Rotunda was built around the existing church over the course of twenty-eight years, mostly by the local Mosta residents themselves.  Legend says that once the new Rotunda was completed, the older church was dismantled and removed within one week.  During World War II, Malta was attacked thousands of times by German bombers.  On April 9^th in 1942, a German bomb penetrated the dome.  It landed amidst 300 worshippers in the church at the time, but miraculously it did not explode and no one was injured.  The damage to the Rotunda was not extensive.  Today, the spot where it pierced the dome can be seen from inside the church, 184 feet below.

In the morning of our second day, Don took another quick hike through Valletta , visiting the Great domed Basilica of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, and then the Malta Knights Grand Master's Palace, including its Armory Museum and living salons.  The fascinating Palace Armory featured the weapons and suits of armor that knights wore centuries ago.  A traveling exhibit of artworks by Pablo Picasso and Joan Miro, two of Spain's most revered artists, was on display in the Palace.  This was a nice bonus attraction for anyone touring the Palace.  Viewing these renowned artists' abstract works was an interesting detour from the historic setting in which they were displayed.

We had been to Malta once before, during our Mediterranean cruise.  On that occasion, the weather was terribly hot and dusty, and we toured the fortress town of Mdina and one of Valletta's nearby harbor towns of Senglea and Vittoriosa.  This trip, our weather was pleasantly cooler and we were able to visit several interesting places we had not seen previously and learn new things about this small nation's turbulent history.