Explore Paola

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 Upper Barrakka Gardens were laid out in 1661 on the St Peter and St Paul Bastion as a private garden for the Italian knights and opened to the public in 1824. Arcades frame a terrace overlooking the Grand Harbour and the Three Cities; below it, the Saluting Battery fires a cannon at noon and at 16:00.

The Auberge de Castille was built in 1574 by Girolamo Cassar for the knights of the langue of Castile, León and Portugal, and rebuilt in 1741–1745 under Grand Master Pinto with the Baroque facade seen today. It has been the office of the Prime Minister of Malta since 1972 and is not open to visitors; the facade faces Castille Square.

The Royal Opera House was designed by Edward Middleton Barry and opened in 1866 beside the city gate of Valletta. Bombing destroyed it in April 1942, and its ruined columns and walls were left standing for decades. Since 2013 the ruins have served as Pjazza Teatru Rjal, an open-air performance venue built within the old walls.

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.

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 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 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.

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 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.

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 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.

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.

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.