Explore Mosta

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 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.

The Ħal Saflieni Hypogeum is an underground burial complex cut into the limestone on three levels between about 4000 and 2500 BC. Found in 1902 by builders laying house foundations in Paola, it is a UNESCO World Heritage Site; its chambers imitate the architecture of the temples above ground. Visits are in small groups with tickets booked well in advance.

The Lower Barrakka Gardens lie on St Christopher Bastion at the eastern edge of Valletta, looking over the entrance to the Grand Harbour and its breakwater. At their centre stands a Doric temple built in 1810 as a monument to Sir Alexander Ball, the first British civil commissioner of Malta; the Siege Bell Memorial stands just below.

Fort St Angelo stands at the tip of Birgu on the site of a medieval castle and was rebuilt by the Knights of St John from 1530 as their first seat in Malta. It was their headquarters during the Great Siege of 1565 and later served the Royal Navy as HMS St Angelo until 1979. Restored in 2015, it shows the fort's history, its chapels and the Grand Master's house.

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.

The Tarxien Temples are a complex of four megalithic structures built between about 3600 and 2500 BC, excavated from 1915 by Themistocles Zammit. Stone blocks carved with spirals and friezes of animals, and the lower half of a large female statue, are shown in replica on site, with the originals in the National Museum of Archaeology. A canopy now shelters the remains.

Ħaġar Qim is a megalithic temple built between about 3600 and 3200 BC on a ridge above the southern coast of Malta and part of a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Its facade and chambers use some of the largest stones of the Maltese temples, one about seven metres long. The Venus of Malta and seated 'fat figures' found here are in the National Museum of Archaeology.

St Lawrence's Church on the Birgu waterfront served as the conventual church of the Knights of St John from 1530 until St John's in Valletta was completed in 1577. The present Baroque building was designed by Lorenzo Gafà and built in 1681–1697; its altarpiece, the Martyrdom of St Lawrence, is by Mattia Preti.

Mnajdra is a group of three megalithic temples built between about 3600 and 2500 BC in a hollow above the sea, 500 metres below Ħaġar Qim, and part of a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The lower temple is aligned with the sun: at the equinoxes the first light passes straight through its main doorway, and at the solstices it falls on the edges of stone slabs inside.

The Inquisitor's Palace in Birgu was built in the 1530s as the law courts of the Order of St John and from 1574 to 1798 was the seat of the Roman Inquisition in Malta. Visitors see the inquisitors' apartments, the tribunal room, the chapel and the prison cells, whose walls still carry prisoners' graffiti; it also houses a museum of ethnography.

The Malta at War Museum occupies an 18th-century army barracks at the Couvre Porte gate of Birgu and tells the story of the islands in the Second World War, when they were among the most heavily bombed places in Europe. It shows the wartime newsreel Malta G.C., uniforms and objects of civilian life, and leads into a rock-cut air-raid shelter beneath the town.

Esplora is an interactive science centre opened in 2016 in the grounds of Villa Bighi, a villa of 1675 above the Grand Harbour that became the Royal Naval Hospital Bighi in the 1830s. Its historic buildings and gardens hold hands-on exhibits on physics, the human body and the environment, and a planetarium with a 10.7-metre dome.

The Blue Grotto is a natural sea arch and a set of caves in the limestone cliffs of Malta's south coast, below the cliffs of Qrendi. Small boats leave the inlet of Wied iż-Żurrieq for the caves, where sunlight reflected from the white sandy bottom turns the water a deep blue, strongest in the morning. The arch can also be seen from a viewpoint on the coast road.

Fort Rinella is a Victorian coastal battery built by the British in 1878–1886 to house a single 100-ton Armstrong gun, one of only two such guns surviving in the world. The battery keeps the gun in its emplacement along with magazines, barracks and the steam machinery that loaded it, and is run as a museum with costumed guides.

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 Red Tower, or St Agatha's Tower, was built in 1647–1649 by the Knights of St John on the Marfa Ridge to guard Mellieħa Bay and signal to Gozo, Comino and Mdina. The square tower with corner turrets is painted red and holds a small chapel to St Agatha. Restored by Din l-Art Ħelwa, it is staffed by volunteers and has period cannon on its roof.