Book Malta attraction tickets

Few places in the Mediterranean carry quite so much history in so compact a space. Malta, an archipelago of three inhabited islands sitting roughly midway between Sicily and the North African coast, has been fought over, settled, and shaped by Phoenicians, Romans, Arabs, Normans, the Knights of St John, Napoleon's forces, and the British, each leaving something legible in the stone. The result is a country where the landscape itself reads as a layered document, and where the sea is never more than a short drive from anywhere you happen to be standing.

Valletta, the capital, is one of the smallest in the European Union by area, yet it contains a density of baroque architecture, fortifications, and cultural institutions that would be remarkable in a city ten times its size. Built by the Knights of St John following the Great Siege of 1565, it was conceived as a planned city from the outset, its grid of streets dropping steeply toward the Grand Harbour on one side and Marsamxett Harbour on the other. The Grand Harbour itself is among the finest natural harbours in the world, and a cruise across its waters gives a perspective on the fortifications and the skyline that no amount of walking the streets can quite replicate. The Valletta Harbour Cruise, one of the most popular experiences available through the catalogue here, makes that argument plainly.