Explore Mellieħa

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 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 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 Catacombs are a group of underground cemeteries cut into the rock outside the walls of the Roman town of Melite, used from the 3rd century AD for pagan, Jewish and Christian burials. More than 20 of the tombs can be entered; the largest has two round agape tables carved from the rock, where funeral meals were held.

Ġgantija is a pair of megalithic temples on the Xagħra plateau of Gozo, built between about 3600 and 3200 BC and among the oldest free-standing structures in the world. Their outer wall of huge stone blocks gave rise to the legend that giants built them. A visitor centre shows finds from the site and from the nearby Xagħra Stone Circle.

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.

Ta' Kola Windmill in Xagħra was built in 1725 under the Knights of St John and rebuilt in the 1780s. Named after its last miller, Ġuzeppi Grech, known as Żeppu ta' Kola, it keeps its millstones and wooden machinery on the upper floor, while the rooms below show the miller's living quarters and traditional Gozitan tools.

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.

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 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.

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.

Fort St Elmo is a star-shaped fort built in 1552 at the tip of the Sciberras peninsula, before Valletta existed. It fell after a month of bombardment in the Great Siege of 1565 and was rebuilt and enlarged by the Knights. Today it houses the National War Museum, whose exhibits run from prehistory to the Second World War, including the George Cross awarded to Malta in 1942.