Valletta; Monday, 19 March, 2007

When I originally booked I had not looked at the dates in any guide book. It was only a few weeks before visiting that I found out the 19th is a public holiday. Consequently, I realised that most of today could be spent looking at the very firmly locked doors of museums and attractions. I had, however, pre-booked tickets to look round one of the most impressive temples in Malta at 4pm, so I had to find stuff to do in the intervening 6 hours or so!

Thankfully, apart from a few shops and the tourist information office, nobody else appeared to be paying much attention to the public holiday and virtually everything was open. First stop was the Great Siege of Malta exhibition. This is an exhibition where you walk through with a CD-Player strapped to your chest which should play the relevant soundtrack for each area, and set the lighting and videos going. On the whole it worked relatively well, but in a few rooms things either didn't start or went out of sync. The museum tells the history of the Knights of St John who, after being defeated in Jerusalem and evicted from their Island base in Rhodes eventually settled in Malta in the mid-16th Century. In 1565 the, then mighty, Turkish empire was getting a little bit annoyed by the knights continuing attacks on their fleet (the Turks did allow them to leave Rhodes without being killed, so you can sort of understand their annoyance). The Turks besieged Malta with the intention of wiping out the Knights. Over three months of fierce battles ensued, ending when a relief force from Sicily arrived, the Turks left, and from that point onwards their Empire started to disintegrate. The exhibition continues on with a brief explanation of the history of the Knights after the siege, a couple of hundred years of relative peace and prosperity followed by rapid collapse when most of their benefactors found themselves lying beneath the guillotine on the streets of France, 18 months of occupation by Napoleon's troops before Nelson came along to take the Islands for Britain until the mid 1960's when they gained independence. The only negative of the exhibition and, to some extent Malta as a whole, is the over simplification of late medieval history. the Knights are always portrayed as the Christian "good guys" against the "Evil" Muslim Turks.

From the exhibition it was a short walk to the State Apartments. The armoury that I had visited on Saturday is based in the old stables of the Apartments, but on Saturday they had been closed for a function. Today they were open, but in hindsight, it was probably a bad idea to visit. Whilst I did get to see most stuff I spent the entire time being engulfed in German and Japanese tourists, to the extent I was left wondering if there were any people left in Germany and Japan at the time!

Next stop from there was the old Knights hospital. Today it houses an exhibition on how the knights cared for the sick and injured, and the use of the hospital after the French take-over of the island. After looking around the hospital I stopped briefly for some lunch before heading back to the bus station and catching the bus out to one of the three cities that overlook Valletta on the other side of the harbour, Birgu (or as it has been known since the end of the siege Vittoriosa.) First stop here was the Inquisitor's Palace.

The palace houses a small exhibition on the role of the Inquisitor, thankfully (for the locals at least) the Inquisitor on Malta was a lot less "enthusiastic" than his Spanish counterpart, but had to be brought in after the knights started to become a little less religious than their leaders wanted. The museum is not massively interesting, but the building is worth looking around.

From there it was a short walk back to the main gate of Birgu and the Malta at War exhibition. The exhibition is based in the air raid shelters that were carved out of the rock during World War II to shelter the Maltese from the Italian and German air-raids. You start by watching a 20 minute film that was originally released in 1943, after the invasion of Sicily and the end of the attacks on Malta, as a propaganda tool to show the rest of the allies that the people of Malta had been through as bad, and worse then they were going through, but had made it through victorious (for the bravery of the people the entire nation was awarded the George Cross, the UK's highest civilian award for bravery, which still appears in the top left hand corner of the flag). After the film you are handed a hard hat and descend into the shelter. The complex is quite large, but it must still have been cramped when there were hundreds of people crowded into it.

By the time I emerged from the shelter it was gone three so I headed back to the bus stop and caught the bus back to Paola, mid way between Birgu and Valletta. Here, underneath the streets of this unassuming suburb, is what UNESCO classify as a "Unique site". The Hypogeum is an underground temple, carved out of the rock it resembles many of the temples on the surface, and yet was carved by hand from the rock. The Hypogeum has always been a popular attraction on Malta and consequently was slowly being destroyed by all the visitors and the Carbon Dioxide they were breathing out. Following massive conservation work the rock has been stabilised, but entrance is now restricted to just 80 people per day, tickets have to be booked in advance and when I arrived the had a sign up saying that it was fully booked for three weeks.

The tour starts with a small exhibition explaining about some of the findings in the excavations before moving into a small theatre to watch a short video about the site. From the point at which the video starts the entire tour is timed by a computer to ensure that damage from breath is minimised. As you are guided around the actual Hypogeum the lights come on and go off, to show where you should be. The structure itself is breath taking (excuse the pun) and amazing, given that it was done by hand and basic tools over 4000 years ago.

After the Hypogeum I walked the short distance to the neighbouring above ground temples at Tarxien. As it was gone five they had already closed, but you can still view part of them through the fence, and they do look impressive.

I caught the bus back into Valletta and visited the National Archaeology museum. The museum houses many of the artefacts that have been found in the temples across the island, Hagar Qim, Mnajdra, Tarxien and the Hypogeum amongst others. The museum also has temporary exhibitions and at the time I visited was very fortunate to see an exhibition on one of the other great Archaeological finds of the 20th Century, the Chinese Terracotta Soldiers. After looking around the exhibitions I caught the bus back from Valletta into Sliema and went for dinner.