Weather | Sports | Forums | Comics | Classifieds | Calendar | Movies
To the invader, this island fortress is forbidding; to the tourist, the ramparts guard a vivid, alluring meld of long history and varied cultures.
By NANCY COOPER FRANK
© St. Petersburg Times, published April 29, 2001
On Malta, the red phone booths look like they've been airlifted from London street corners and plunked down among palms and citrus trees under the Mediterranean sun. Motorists on this island republic also drive on the left, as in Britain.
But their passionate disregard for safety and order puts them in a league with the drivers of Sicily, 60 miles away.
The vintage British-made public buses are tangerine-colored on the main island and racing silver on its sister island of Gozo. Inside, the buses are hand-painted with Italianate Madonnas and prayers in Latin, English and Maltese, a language based on Arabic and spiced with Italian, French, Spanish and other tongues.
Fishing boats here resemble Venetian gondolas, painted in crayon-box stripes.
Malta has long had the fortune and the misfortune of being caught in the middle, at the crossroads of several worlds. It is almost exactly in the center of the Mediterranean -- whose name translates as "the middle of the Earth."
Massive defensive walls testify to Malta's strategic position in struggles for control of the Mediterranean from ancient Roman times all the way up to World War II.
My husband and I flew in for a few days from Catania in Sicily, choosing Valletta, Malta's capital, as our base. Valletta is a fortress-ringed city carved from a hunk of limestone jutting into the sea. It was founded by the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem, an aristocratic Catholic order that transformed itself into an elite military machine during the Crusades.
After claiming Malta as their stronghold in 1530, the Knights beat back an attack from the most powerful force then in the Mediterranean, the Turks, in 1565. To celebrate this victory, remembered as the Great Siege of Malta, the Knights built their new capital.
Rows of narrow, multistory dwellings with balconies enclosed by tall, dark wooden shutters descend steeply to the peninsula's fortified perimeter.
Scattered among them, and made of the same lustrous, caramel-colored stone, are the Knights' baroque showpieces. There's the Palace of the Grand Masters of the order and an auberge or inn for each European province or language represented by the order.
The 18th century jewel-box Manoel Theatre is one of the oldest in Europe still in use. The Cathedral of St. John, patron saint of the order, reflects the two sides of the Knights' image, with its stern, almost military exterior and its impossibly lavish interior.
Nowadays, the Knights' Library serves as a weathered backdrop to the forest of cafe-table umbrellas on Republic Square. A stone-faced Queen Victoria looks down on the cappuccino sippers.
The British first came to Malta to dislodge Napoleon's occupation forces and then stayed on, for 150 years. The biggest legacy of Malta's colonial period, which ended in 1964, is the English language, spoken by just about everybody here in addition to Maltese.
In and around Republic Street, the main shopping thoroughfare reserved for pedestrians, there are "American" jeans boutiques, dark bric-a-brac shops, tobacconists and newsstands festooned with the latest winning lottery numbers -- a national passion.
There are places to buy Maltese pastizzis (savory filled pastries), Cornish pies or something spelled Kish Lorraine. Haberdasheries tout "Hats for Hire" for formal occasions.
The headquarters of football clubs, brass bands and other fraternal associations offer dirt-cheap pub-style fare and an open-door policy.
I would consider the bookshops of downtown Valletta to be outstanding even if I had not been starved for English-language reading material after a couple of weeks in Sicily. There was a wonderful selection beyond The Maltese Falcon, perched next to The Jukebox Queen of Malta, a recent novel set during World War II.
The books came in handy, as we were not tempted by the discos catering to Northern European sun-and-fun seekers in the nearby resort hubs of Sliema and St. Julien's.
Valletta itself bustles with shoppers and office workers in the morning and the post-siesta afternoon, then empties out by early evening. One warm evening after the last cafe closed at 9, we listened to the sounds of a rehearsing orchestra float from an upper story and echo through the empty stone streets.
As the Knights doubtless intended, Valletta looks most imposing from the water. From the small harbor-tour boat, the zigzagging line of bastions protecting the peninsula appeared invincible. A black stump sticking out of the water is all that remains of a bridge battered during Axis bombardment in World War II, in what has been called the Second Great Siege.
The fortresses must have daunted potential invaders, but I was more intimidated by the chart crammed with numbers and squiggly lines. A medieval battle plan? A topographic map of the Mediterranean sea floor?
No, just a poorly photocopied diagram of the main bus terminus, an open square around a fountain in front of Valletta's ceremonial city gates.
Here, a squadron of orange buses awaited us -- some with fancy grille work, some with electric-orange tail fins -- representing dozens of routes and every era of automotive design from the 1940s to the present.
Harried-looking bus-line workers thrust a copy of the chart into our hands in a pre-emptive move against any questions about routes or schedules.
Over three days we amassed quite a pile of the charts, and it turned out the system was not as complicated as I had feared. The meandering routes allowed us to see a great part of the main island, while making Malta seem much larger than its 27-mile length.
We waited and watched as nuns, young men in dark business suits, a priest or two, women with children and parcels, and sunburned German and British tourists heading for the beaches climbed on and off various buses.
One orange bus wove through the dense conglomeration of old fortified towns and resort centers around Valletta, out to scrubby hills, past vineyards and fields sprinkled with rocks and edged with prickly pears, and on to the village of Marsaxlokk in the southeast.
This is where the Turkish ships first landed in the Great Siege, but today Marsaxlokk is best known for its fleet of brightly colored fishing vessels.
On another day, we took a bus to Mdina, the former capital set inland on the island's highest point, its bastion commanding a panoramic view of the countryside. Mdina's name comes from the Arabic for "walled city." Its gleaming almond-vanilla walls are full of echoes of Malta's history before the arrival of the Knights of St. John.
When the Arabs took over Malta in the ninth century, they beefed up the fortifications of the crumbling Roman town, gave it its present name, and ruled the island from inside its walls for about 200 years -- until the Norman King of Sicily conquered Malta.
Mdina remained the capital as Malta changed hands several times in the dynastic intrigues of medieval Europe. It lost much of its importance after the Knights came, although the Knights built the magnificent baroque Cathedral of St. Paul here.
With a hundred or so residents, Mdina is something of a ghost town now, preserved as one of the most intact walled medieval cities in the world.
We wandered its twisting alleys, admiring gothic carvings and coats of arms, then took refuge from the blazing morning sun in a shaded courtyard cafe.
Just outside Mdina, in Rabat, we found stone remnants of earlier eras: the mosaic floors of a Roman villa and St. Paul's Grotto, where the saint is supposed to have preached during the three months he was shipwrecked on Malta in 60 A.D.
Reaching back yet further in time are the prehistoric temples at Tarxien, a jumble of standing and fallen megaliths on the road to Marsaxlokk.
There is a reconstruction of the temples in the Archaeology Museum in Valletta, which also houses the extravagantly fat stone goddess unearthed at the site.
From the far northwest of the main island, we took the ferry across the 5-mile strait to Malta's second major island, Gozo, passing by the fortress-capped rocky islet of Comino.
Gozo is about one-third the size of the main island of Malta, quieter and more rural, with better soil for farming, fewer tourist trappings (especially away from the shoreline) and a strong sense of its separate identity from the main island.
Gozo boasts its own medieval walled capital. A pair of prehistoric stone circles, perhaps the oldest standing structures in the world, live up to their shared name, Ggantija, meaning "really big."
In the 20th century, approximately 5,000 years after these temples were built, the residents of the tiny island erected a gigantic church in the village of Xewkija and capped it with a dome that's the third largest unsupported dome in Europe.
As if to prepare us for so much history, the bus that jolted us to the ferry for Gozo seemed to predate the invention of the shock absorber. The partition behind the driver's seat was painted with a Madonna and Child wreathed in flowers and the Ave Maria in flowing cursive. (Maltese piety expresses itself in homey, delicate touches like this as much as in the construction of giant houses of worship.)
The bus that took us back that evening from the ferry station to Valletta was more modern, and the ride was smoother, but the driver's partition was gun-metal gray and bore a motto of dubious inspirational value: "No smoking."
No matter -- it is the old buses with their bulbous fenders and their polychrome saints that visitors remember, along with the displaced London phone booths, the Crayola-striped gondolas, and the other bursts of color against all that sun-glazed stone and the sea.
Freelance writer Nancy Cooper Frank and her husband spend part of the year in Clearwater.
All telephone numbers below should be prefaced by the country code for Malta, 356, when calling from the U.S.
GETTING THERE: There are direct flights to Malta from most major European cities. We flew Air Malta from Catania in Sicily, buying our tickets two weeks ahead of time from a travel agent in Sicily. They cost about $75 each, round-trip. (Air Malta's Web site is http://www.airmalta.com.)
Swissair, Austrian Airlines, Lufthansa, British Airways and other airlines also fly to Malta. Hydrofoils run between Malta and Siracusa in Sicily, spring through fall.
WHEN TO GO: April to early June and September to November are the best times, with the best prices and weather. Avoid the summer, when Malta is overrun by beachgoers.
STAYING THERE: We booked a room upon arrival at the friendly and atmospheric, if somewhat frayed, Castille Hotel. It is in a convenient location near Valletta's pedestrian zone and main bus terminus. We paid 24 Maltese lira (about $50) a night, after bargaining. Castille Hotel, Castille Square, Valletta. Call 243677, fax 243678.
GETTING AROUND: You can rent a car once you get to Malta; be ready to drive defensively. Malta Online (www.mol.net.mt), a commercial site, has links to several Maltese rental-car companies.
Taxis are expensive but are a good option for short hops. The public buses are a great way to see the island, though at a slow pace. Bus rides cost less than $1.
The 20-minute ferry to the island of Gozo leaves frequently from Cirkewwa on the main island. It is free to Gozo but a little more than $3 on the way back.
There is good hiking on the islands. Pick up a hiking map at one of the bookstores clustered in and around Republic Street.
EATING THERE: If it is easy to get a bad meal in Malta, luckily it is not too hard to find a good one.
Italian and other Continental culinary influences exist alongside British ones. The best local specialties are the fish and seafood dishes. Try the local fish called lampuka.
Our favorite restaurant was Trattoria Da Pippo's, in downtown Valletta, with top-notch fresh seafood and pasta. It is small and open for lunch only; make reservations or get there early to snag a table (136 Melita St., Valletta, call 248029).
Giannini's, with a view of the harbor, is also very good. Lunch Monday-Saturday; dinner Friday and Saturday (St. Michael's Bastion, Valletta, call 237121).
FOR MORE INFORMATION: Contact the Malta Tourism Authority, http://www.visitmalta.com; e-mail info@visitmalta.com.