The Tripologist: Where's the best place to stay in Malta?

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The Tripologist: Where's the best place to stay in Malta?

By Michael Gebicki
The harbour of Valetta, Malta.

The harbour of Valetta, Malta.Credit: Medioimages

My siblings and I will be travelling to Malta with our mother for five days to celebrate her 80th birthday. Which area do you suggest staying in and what are the must-see sights and activities?

J. Sussman, Maroubra

Most of the quality hotels in Malta can be found on the northern side of Valletta, between Sliema and St George's Bay. An Airbnb might work well in your case and again, this would be an ideal location.

The big attraction is Valetta itself, which owes its shape mostly to the crusading Knights of the Order of St John. In Valetta they created the mother of all fortresses, vast and impregnable, its ravelins, bastions and curtain walls standing like an instructional model for military engineers, conceived at a time when the science was at its most crucial. Their building material was the local limestone and within the city walls the knights built a Romeo-and-Juliet city of serpentine streets and fanciful arrangements of towers and balconies, clinging to the steep topography of the peninsula in a huddle so dense that neither cars, electrical wires nor even Axis bombers have much altered the 16th-century streetscapes. Most eloquent of all their memorials is St John's Co-Cathedral, its floor paved with the tessellated marble tombs of some 400 knights, its side chapels embellished with gilt and ornament and the caskets of the Grand Masters of the Order and, in the crypt beneath the altar, the mortal remains of de la Valette, vanquisher of Suleiman the Magnificent.

Away from Valletta, Mata is chock-full of unsuspected wonders. Scattered about the island are remnants of fabulously mysterious megalithic temples and the limestone cave at Ghar Dalam, where fossil remains of pygmy elephants and hippos date from the time when Europe and Africa were one. There's a Blue Grotto, where the limestone caves are shot with an ethereal light that comes from under the sea, several spectacular cave dives, an ancient city, Mdina, crammed with palaces, churches and dungeons, and on the satellite island of Gozo the legendary site of Calypso's Cave.

Malta was the subject of the cover feature in Traveller on June 18-19; the story is online at traveller.com.au

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