Yesterday, I made a list of all the things we want to see and do in Malta. I think we’ll need to stay another 3 months to have time to cross everything off on our list. Yes, there is that much to see and do in Malta. But, today’s adventure was to the Three Cities, Bormla (Cospicua), Birgu (Vittoriosa) and L’Isla (Senglea). The Knights changed the old names of the cities, that’s why the names are used rather interchangeably. The Maltese want to use the old names.
We took the #13 bus in to Valletta to first go to the Vodafone store to refill Christine’s data plan, which means we’ve been in Malta now more than 30 days. That accomplished, we headed back to the bus terminus to get on the #4 bus Cospicua. We got a little lost because the bus terminus has a lot of construction going on, so we went a little out of our way in finding bay A3. And once we got ourselves reoriented and were heading in the right direction, I stepped off an unseen step and found myself on the ground. I hate that! Fortunately, only my pride was injured. It is a little challenging walking in Malta because the sidewalks and streets are often uneven and slippery. We’re constantly pointing out steps and curbs to each other so we don’t fall (where was Christine when I needed her?). My pet peeve is around fountains. With all the hills and street slopes, fountain steps often have graduated steps beginning with tiny little rises before the steps actually begin. I’ve tripped up lots of those. My head is swiveling around looking up and I’m not watching where my feet go.
But no matter, off to Cospicua. The main reason for going to Cospicua is that Christine attended a school there as a child. It was the Royal Naval School; Christine’s father was in the British Navy during the war and then transferred to the Admiralty in intelligence after the war. Just before our bus turned off the main road, Christine said, “the school bus used to turn here,” and that’s exactly what our bus did. We got off the bus down the street from where we thought the school was. We walked through a little park going up the hill, had some trouble getting out of the fenced in park onto St. Nicholas Street, but then managed to head in the right direction.
Christine could feel we were in the right place, although all the signage indicated that we were heading to Kullegg Santa Margerita, a secondary school. But, no doubt it was the right place.
We had visited this place back in 1985, and it did seem vaguely familiar to me, especially the large courtyard. Some of the buildings were original, one built in 1896, but others were obviously newer. The school is now a boy’s school. We had checked in at the office, where a receptionist tried to find an available teacher to take us on a tour, but that didn’t work out. So, we just wandered around the outside of the buildings.
One of the new buildings was the library. We found it very interesting that the name of the library, and a painting of a quote on the side of the library, were American authors.
After looking at the school, we walked in to Vittoriosa, or Birgu. Now for some history. There have been settlements in Bormla (Conspicua) since earlier than the Phonecians. Bormla has several hills, so the vantage point in protecting the harbor was the attraction. In 1638, the Knights began building a line of fortifications around the Three Cities, the Santa Margerita Lines. This was a land front defense to protect the cities from invasion by the Turks. Work ended on this line of fortifications in 1638 due to a lack of funds. Then, in the 1670s, another Grand Master of the Knights, Nicolas Cotoner, wanted to fortify the Three Cities and so he oversaw the building of the Cottonera Lines, which were a second set of defensive walls built a little farther landside beyond the Santa Margerita Line. It’s hardly believable how these defensive walls were built at such length and breadth around these cities.
These walls were truly impressive.
We walked between the Lines all the way to the gate entering Vittorioso.
I fell in love with Vittorioso (Birgu)! It ranks right up there with Mdina, maybe even more so because in this city, one gets the feeling that it is alive and regular people live there. In the old section, called Collachio, the streets are windy and narrow, like in Mdina, but it’s easy to tell that most of the houses lining the streets are occupied. You can’t really tell that along the Mdina streets. Although you don’t see many people walking the streets, I think they’re all at work, an occasional car comes through and you have to jump up on a doorway step to give the car enough room to pass. Fortunately, there’s not much traffic in this section of the Collachio.
This old section of Vittorioso is the first home of the Knights of St. John. They built their Auberges here. An Auberge is really just an inn where the knights had rooms and space for gathering. The Auberges were set up by language of the knights, langues, and I think there were 8 or 9 different langues. A couple of the auberges are still standing and are in use either by residents or shops. One of the auberges, built in 1555, is home of the local Vittoriosa city council.
We stopped for a nice lunch at an outdoor café along the marina. Then we went to the Maritime Museum. The exhibits were about the history of boats in Malta, with a very large section about the British Navy, who were in residence in Malta from 1800 until 1979. There were some interesting displays. This 1735 painting of the fortified three cities is neat.
And to think how mariners moved around the Mediterranean in all kinds of boats, and how they survived to tell about their voyages is remarkable.
Here’s a masthead from the HMS Hibernian, which was a gunnery ship having 110 guns. It was in service nearly 100 years, from the early 1800s until it was finally scrapped in 1902.
I found this old photo of the harbor really fascinating, with all the tall ships.
Another place we visited was the Inquisitor’s Palace. Here was the home of Malta’s Roman Inquisition that was conducted during the second half of the 16th century. The Roman Inquisition was responsible for prosecuting individuals accused of committing offenses relating to heresy, including Protestantism, sorcery, immorality, blasphemy, Judaizing and witchcraft, as well as for censorship of printed literature. After 1567, the Inquisition was broaden beyond that of theological matters, to concerns such as love magic, witchcraft, superstitions, and cultural morality. This was an effort by the Catholic church solely to control people so they followed to the letter Catholic doctrine.
The palace was interesting, but many of the displays about the inquisitor’s process were disturbing. I am appalled by so much that happens in the name of religion.
After the palace, we wandered around and then walked all along Dockyard Creek to its end and then over to the Senglea side of the creek. Here’s some more photos of both Vittoriosa and Senglea.
We got to the tip of Senglea and saw the Senglea Point watchtower. And across the harbor was the ferry to Sicily departing and cruise ships docked at the Valletta waterfront.
So, by now we’re exhausted, but getting back to somewhere in Senglea to catch a bus was all uphill. We trudged our way uphill and were so pleased to find a bus stop just when we needed it. We took the #1 bus back into Valletta. There was a crowd at bay B2 awaiting the #13. Christine and I got separated trying to get into the bus. She got on and we kind of gestured to each other that I would take the next one. She was seated in the last row and people were packed in like sardines. But I managed to be the last person to squeeze in. Christine didn’t know I was on the bus until close to our stop. She was happy to see me, and we got off together and made our way home happy and exhausted.