Explore Qrendi

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.

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 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.

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.

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 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 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 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.