Malta

Malta's story begins with some of the oldest free-standing structures on Earth. The megalithic temples of Ġgantija on Gozo, and Ħaġar Qim and Mnajdra on the main island, were raised between roughly 3600 and 2500 BC — older than the Egyptian pyramids and Stonehenge — by a society that then vanished. Phoenicians, Carthage, and Rome followed; tradition holds that the apostle Paul was shipwrecked here around AD 60 and converted the islands.

Arab rule from 870 reshaped the language and much of the place-naming before the Normans took Malta in 1091 and tied it to Sicily. The decisive chapter came in 1530, when Emperor Charles V granted the islands to the Knights of St John. In 1565 the Knights and the Maltese withstood a months-long Ottoman siege — the Great Siege — and afterwards built the fortress city of Valletta. Napoleon expelled the Knights in 1798; a Maltese revolt and a British blockade brought the islands under Britain, formalised in 1814.

As a British colony and naval base, Malta was besieged and heavily bombed in the Second World War, and the whole island was awarded the George Cross for its endurance. Independence came in 1964, a republic was declared in 1974, and the last British forces left in 1979. Malta joined the European Union in 2004 and the euro in 2008. The 2017 car-bomb murder of the journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia and the political crisis that followed brought lasting scrutiny of governance and the rule of law.

Malta is overwhelmingly Roman Catholic, and the Church still shapes the calendar and the map: nearly every town and village is built around a large baroque parish church, and the year turns on saints' days, Holy Week, and Christmas. The village festa — days of band marches, street decoration, competing brass clubs, and enormous firework displays, often with a friendly rivalry between two parishes or two saints in the same town — is the great communal event of the summer.

Society is close-knit and family-centred, in the way of a small island where people are rarely more than a cousin or two apart. Sunday lunch with extended family is a fixture. The Maltese language is a strong marker of identity, and switching between Maltese and English within a sentence is normal.

British rule left visible habits alongside the Mediterranean ones: driving on the left, red telephone and post boxes, afternoon tea, and a widespread command of English. Football is followed passionately, mostly through support for English and Italian clubs, and water polo is the summer sport, played in seawater pitches in the harbours.

With more than half a million people on 316 square kilometres, Malta is among the most densely populated countries in the world, and most of that population is concentrated in the conurbation around Valletta, Sliema, and the harbour towns. Gozo, the second island, is greener, slower, and more rural.

The economy runs on tourism, financial services, online gaming (Malta is a European hub for the iGaming industry), shipping and ship registration, and, more controversially, the past sale of citizenship to wealthy foreigners. A construction boom has transformed skylines and drawn a large migrant workforce, and the pace and scale of building is a constant subject of public argument.

Life follows the heat. Work starts early; the middle of a July afternoon is dead; and social life moves outdoors to seafronts and village squares in the evening. In August much of the country effectively runs on feast time, with families returning from abroad and towns given over to their celebrations.

Maltese cooking is Sicilian at heart, with North African and British threads. The national dish is fenek, rabbit — usually fried in garlic and wine or slow-cooked into a stew, and traditionally eaten at a communal fenkata meal. Bread is central: the flat, crusty ftira, and the ubiquitous pastizzi, diamond-shaped pastries filled with ricotta or mushy peas, sold hot from hole-in-the-wall shops.

Everyday dishes include bragioli (thin beef rolls stuffed and braised), kapunata (the local caponata), aljotta fish soup, soppa tal-armla ("widow's soup" of seasonal vegetables and cheese), and, in autumn, lampuki pie made with dorado. Gozo is known for its small peppered sheep's cheeses, ġbejniet, and for sun-dried tomatoes and sea salt.

To drink there is Kinnie, a bittersweet soft drink flavoured with bitter oranges and herbs; Cisk, the standard lager; and a growing range of Maltese wines from the islands' small vineyards. Almond-based sweets, imqaret (date pastries), and kannoli round off a meal.

Valletta, a UNESCO World Heritage city, packs the Knights' legacy into a small grid: St John's Co-Cathedral, its floor paved with knights' tombstones and its oratory holding two Caravaggios; the Grand Master's Palace; and the Upper Barrakka Gardens looking out over the Grand Harbour to the Three Cities of Birgu, Senglea, and Cospicua. Mdina, the walled former capital inland, is a quiet maze of noble palaces known as the "Silent City", with Roman remains in neighbouring Rabat.

The prehistoric sites are Malta's singular attraction: the temples of Ħaġar Qim and Mnajdra on the southern cliffs, Tarxien near Valletta, Ġgantija on Gozo, and the Ħal Saflieni Hypogeum, an underground rock-cut necropolis entered only in small timed groups.

For landscape, the Blue Grotto sea caves sit below the southern cliffs, and the Dingli Cliffs give the island's highest, emptiest coast. Gozo has the Citadel above Victoria, the red sand of Ramla Bay, and the Dwejra coast, where the much-photographed Azure Window rock arch stood until it collapsed in a storm in 2017. The tiny island of Comino holds the turquoise Blue Lagoon, packed in summer and serene out of season.