Fort St. Angelo across the Grand Harbour from Valletta has played a central role in Malta’s military history.

Credit: MALTA TOURISM AUTHORITY

Malta is booming these days. With every step they take around the capital Valletta, international visitors can’t help but notice they are surrounded by centuries-old limestone bastions and fortifications. Every stone here tells a story, from those laid just before the Knights of St. John’s victory in the 1565 Great Siege of Malta, out of which a new identity was forged, to the bedrock out of which vast tunnel systems were carved to protect Allied forces coordinating defense in WWII.

How appropriate then that the Malta Tourism Authority through their VisitMalta platform and Heritage Malta have launched a scheme to promote their nation as a military tourism destination, and to guide those curious to know more about how this small plucky Mediterranean island has survived more than its fair share of invasion and conflict for centuries.

Honoring Those Who Sacrificed

On Remembrance Day last November 11, dignitaries from a dozen nations gathered in the Commonwealth Naval Cemetery at Kalkara across the Grand Harbour from Valletta to honor those who served in WWI when Malta was known as the “Nurse of the Mediterranean.” More than 100,000 wounded from Gallipoli and other battle zones were treated in Malta. That role as caregivers goes way back, with the Knights of St. John, after all, also having been known for good reason as the Knights Hospitaller.

The following day dignitaries gathered in Fort St. Elmo at the tip of the Sciberras Peninsula upon which Valletta was built. There, the official military tourism initiative was launched in the Chapel of St. Anne, itself famous as the site of a last stand for six Knights of St. John who vainly fought off Ottoman Janissaries in the 1565 Great Siege.

At Fort. St. Elmo, reenactors often perform historic events.

Credit: Malta Tourism Authority

Fort St. Elmo And The National War Museum

For its part, Fort St. Elmo can make for at least a half day’s visit, especially if you show up Sundays for the In Guardia parade of period reenactors in full Renaissance regalia. Maybe that’s where Mel Gibson got the idea for a potential Great Siege series for which he was reported recently to have been scouting locations. Malta, after all, is already a major film location, with Fort Ricasoli across the Grand Harbour in Kalkara having stood in for the Colosseum in “Gladiator II.”

Either way, Fort St. Elmo today is home to the excellent immersive National War Museum that takes visitors through those centuries of Malta fighting for its very survival. An animation of the Great Siege borrrows images taken from the dozen brilliant fresco panels on the Ottoman invasion painted by Matteo Pérez D’Aleccio in the Throne Room of the Grand Master’s Palace.

Room after room in Fort St. Elmo is devoted to later eras of Malta’s short Napoleonic period and on through the long British colonial era. The actual George Cross that King George VI awarded Malta at the height of Axis bombing is on display. A Gloster Sea Gladiator biplane named Faith holds a place in Maltese citizens’ hearts for its role in the early days of war, while Jeeps, motorcycles and plenty of weaponry fill more rooms.

The Grand Master’s Palace was recently renovated.

Credit: Malta Tourism Authority

In another salient episode largely not known to most North American visitors certainly, a short CGI projection appears on a floor as a narrated recreation depicts the compelling August, 1942 Operation Pedestal. The barely-floating tanker SS Ohio is shown limping under a heavily battered convoy into the Grand Harbour with last minute rescue fuel and supplies. It’s a tale recounted as well in the tragic Alec Guinness love film “The Malta Story,” which, shot in 1953, shows actual devastation that Valletta suffered under Axis bombing.

The socio-economic impact of WWII on the population belongs as much to the military tourism theme as artifacts do. The Victory Kitchens alone are a fascinating survival tale recounted in the museum on how rationed food was cooked in public kitchens on a huge scale for families to take home to eat.

How ironic that with all the hardship that Maltese in Fort St. Elmo alone had once endured, it happens to provide spectacular views of the majestic Grand Harbour on one side and Marsamxett Harbour on the other, with the Mediterranean waters stretching as far as you can see as you pause at the bastions.

Discovering More Valletta

After all that martial subject matter, you’ll welcome a stop at Caffe Cordina, a Valletta institution with roots going back to 1837. Yes, it’s touristy now, perfectly placed as it is on Republic Street, the city’s long straight pedestrianized main street. Enjoy the Belle Époque gilded interior with paintings by late-19th-century leading Romantic artist Giuseppe Calì, or order your lunch or pastries under an umbrella in the facing piazza.

In the newly-renovated Grand Master’s Palace, the Armory has an enormous collection of weaponry.

Credit: Malta Tourism Authority

The recently-renovated Grand Master’s Palace is steps away, where you could easily spend two hours just looking at the dizzying number of medieval and later-century arms in the Armory. The ingenuity, craftsmanship and sheer ornamental beauty of shields and helmets, muskets and arquebusses is astonishing for such utilitarian items. The parade armor of Grand Master Alof de Wignacourt is signed by its maker Pompeo, such was the status behind these pieces.

St. John’s Co-Cathedral is most famous for housing Caravaggio’s sublime The Beheading of Saint John the Baptist. The huge painting is so popular that in an upper floor curators last year put together an excellent (to the tune of more than two million dollars) interactive display on the painter’s techniques and his intense life. It’s a pleasure to pause and watch craftsmen working these days on a full restoration throughout the stunning cathedral.

In St. John’s Co-Cathedral, Caravaggio’s ‘The Beheading of St. John the Baptist’ draws a huge crowd.

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In Valletta, only a few of the auberges still stand in which Knights of St. John resided together based on their language. The Baroque Auberge de Provence on Republic Street is home today to the National Museum of Archaeology, whose collection holds items from Neolithic times through the Phoenician culture that flourished half a millennium before the Romans arrived and beyond—from tiny figurines and coins to sarcophagi and stele.

Come evening, treat yourself to fine dining at Fifty Nine Republic. They have a terrace on St. George’s Square right across from the Grand Master’s Palace. But step downstairs into a sleek and urbane modern room under old stone vaults for a quiet ambience and their Beef Wellington that everyone talks about. You’ve earned it.