Explore Mellieħa

The Sanctuary of Our Lady of Mellieħa is a small church built partly into the rock below Mellieħa's parish church, a place of pilgrimage since the Middle Ages. Its fresco of the Virgin and Child, painted on the rock face, is venerated as one of the oldest Marian images in Malta, and its walls are lined with votive offerings from sailors and the sick.

The Rotunda of Mosta, the parish church of the Assumption, was built in 1833–1860 by the villagers themselves to a design by Giorgio Grognet de Vassé modelled on the Pantheon in Rome. Its unsupported dome is among the largest in Europe. On 9 April 1942 a German bomb pierced the dome during Mass and failed to explode; a replica is shown in the sacristy.

Palazzo Falson is a medieval palace in Mdina, built in the 13th century and enlarged in the 15th, with Gothic doorways and windows around a small courtyard. From 1927 to 1962 it was the home of the collector Olof Gollcher, and his collection of paintings, silver, arms and armour, furniture, carpets and books is shown in the rooms as a house museum.

The Carmelite Priory in Mdina joins the Baroque church of the Annunciation, built between 1660 and 1675 to designs by Francesco Sammut, to a priory where Carmelite friars still live. Visitors see the church, the cloister, the refectory, the kitchen and the friars' cells. The Maltese uprising against French rule began outside it on 2 September 1798.

The Mdina Cathedral Museum occupies the former diocesan seminary, a Baroque building of 1733–1742 by Andrea Belli facing the cathedral. Its collections include woodcuts and engravings by Albrecht Dürer, coins from antiquity to the Knights, church silver, vestments, manuscripts and paintings by Maltese and Italian artists.

The Domvs Romana preserves the remains of a wealthy Roman town house of the 1st century BC, found in 1881 just outside the walls of Mdina. Its polychrome mosaic floors, among them a scene of doves drinking from a bowl, are shown in situ, with marble statues of the imperial family and everyday objects, in a neoclassical museum building of 1882.

Mdina Cathedral, dedicated to St Paul, was rebuilt in 1697–1702 to designs by Lorenzo Gafà after an earthquake destroyed the medieval church in 1693. Tradition places it where the Roman governor Publius met the apostle Paul. Inside are a floor of marble tombstones, a dome painted with scenes from Paul's life and Mattia Preti's Conversion of St Paul in the apse.

The National Museum of Natural History is housed in Palazzo Vilhena, a French Baroque palace built in 1726–1728 for Grand Master António Manoel de Vilhena to designs by Charles François de Mondion. Opened in 1973, it displays rocks, minerals and fossils, shells, insects, and the birds, mammals and marine life of the Maltese islands.

The Basilica of St Paul in Rabat was built between 1653 and 1683, to a design attributed to Francesco Buonamici and completed by Lorenzo Gafà, above the grotto where tradition says the apostle Paul stayed after his shipwreck in AD 60. The chapel of St Publius beside it is older, and the grotto below holds a marble statue of the saint.

The Wignacourt Museum occupies the Baroque residence of the chaplains of the Knights of St John in Rabat, founded under Grand Master Alof de Wignacourt in the early 17th century. It is linked to St Paul's Grotto, where tradition says the apostle lived on Malta, and shows paintings by Mattia Preti and Antoine Favray, catacombs and Second World War shelters.

St Paul's Pro-Cathedral is the Anglican cathedral of Malta, commissioned by Queen Adelaide during her stay on the island and built in 1839–1844 on the site of the Auberge d'Allemagne. Its neoclassical portico faces Independence Square, and its spire, about 60 metres high, is a landmark of the Marsamxett side of Valletta.

The National Museum of Archaeology occupies the Auberge de Provence, built in 1571 to designs by Girolamo Cassar on Republic Street. It shows finds from Malta's prehistoric temples and tombs, among them the Sleeping Lady from the Ħal Saflieni Hypogeum and the Venus of Malta from Ħaġar Qim, as well as Bronze Age and Phoenician objects.

The Manoel Theatre was built in 1731 at the expense of Grand Master António Manoel de Vilhena and is among the oldest working theatres in Europe. Its oval auditorium has three tiers of gilded wooden boxes and a ceiling painted in gold leaf. It is Malta's national theatre, and guided tours show the auditorium, the stage and a small museum.

MUŻA is Malta's national community art museum, opened in 2018 in the Auberge d'Italie, the 16th-century inn of the Italian knights, whose Baroque facade carries a bronze bust of Grand Master Gregorio Carafa. It succeeded the National Museum of Fine Arts and shows Maltese and European art from the Middle Ages onwards, including works by Mattia Preti.

St John's Co-Cathedral was built in 1573–1578 to designs by Girolamo Cassar as the conventual church of the Knights of St John. Its plain exterior contrasts with a Baroque interior decorated by Mattia Preti, a nave floor of some 400 inlaid marble tombstones of knights, and Caravaggio's Beheading of Saint John the Baptist (1608) in the oratory.

The Lascaris War Rooms are tunnels and chambers cut into the rock beneath the Upper Barrakka Gardens, opened in 1940 as the combined war headquarters for the defence of Malta. The Allied landings in Sicily in July 1943 were directed from here, and NATO used the complex until 1977. Restored operations rooms show the plotting tables and wall maps.

The Basilica of the Nativity of Our Lady is the parish church of Xagħra, facing the village square. It was built between 1815 and 1855, with its two bell towers completed in 1872–1892 and the dome added in 1892. Inside are marble-clad walls, a statue of the Virgin carried in procession on her feast on 8 September, and paintings by Gozitan and Italian artists.

The Grandmaster's Palace was begun in 1571 as the residence of the Grand Masters of the Order of St John and later housed the British governors; today it is the Office of the President of Malta. Visitors see the State Rooms, corridors lined with painted friezes and armorial ceilings, and the Palace Armoury with some 5,000 pieces of arms and armour.

The Collegiate Church of St Paul's Shipwreck commemorates the apostle Paul's shipwreck on Malta in AD 60. Built in the 1570s and remodelled in the 17th century, with a facade added in 1885, it holds a gilded wooden statue of St Paul carved by Melchiorre Cafà, a relic of the saint's wrist bone and part of the column on which he is said to have been beheaded.

Casa Rocca Piccola is a 16th-century palazzo on Republic Street, still the home of the noble de Piro family. Visits lead through rooms furnished with the family's antique furniture, silver, paintings and costumes, a small chapel and a courtyard garden, and down into rock-cut shelters used by the household during the bombing of the Second World War.