Explore Qrendi

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.

Mdina Gate is the Baroque main entrance to the walled city, built in 1724 under Grand Master António Manoel de Vilhena to designs by the French engineer Charles François de Mondion. A stone bridge crosses the dry ditch to the gate, whose outer face bears the arms of Vilhena and whose inner face shows reliefs of the saints Paul, Publius and Agatha.

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.

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 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 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.

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.

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.