Explore Valletta

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 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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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.