Malta- 2003

Malta –2003

Sixty miles due south of Sicily and about ninety miles east of the horn of Tunisia lie the islands of Malta, Comino and Gozo … the tiny nation of Malta.
Many geologists believe that there was once a land bridge between North Africa and Europe and that Malta and Sicily were mountain peaks that remained above the water when the bridge was inundated. In fact, the cave of Ghar Dalam contains the hundred-thousand-year-old bones of extinct animals such as dwarf elephants and hippopotami … animals that were not likely to have been able to swim to the islands.
There were also Neanderthal human teeth from about 40,000 years ago found in the same cave. Evidence indicates that these cave dwellers ultimately built huts.
Seven thousand years ago, over a thousand years before the Minoan civilization began in Crete, the Maltese erected a temple of huge megaliths (huge standing stones creating a temple of several rooms), that is the oldest such structure in the world.
The first written record of Malta comes to us from the struggle among the Phoenicians, Greeks, and Persians for dominance of the Mediterranean Sea. After a war in 470 BCE, the Greeks controlled the eastern Mediterranean and Carthage (a Phoenician colony) controlled the west, with Malta on the dividing line between the two superpowers.
Stone columns found in 1697 bear an inscription in both Carthaginian and Greek that is evidence that Carthage controlled Malta. Tracing the lineage of modern Malti (the native language of the islands, although everyone also speaks English) shows that it is derived from Phoenician influenced by the ninth century invasion of the Arabs and the eleventh century takeover by the Normans
In 218 BCE the Romans captured Malta. In 60 CE, Saint Paul and 274 other passengers were shipwrecked here as he was being transported to Rome as a prisoner. He supposedly converted the islanders and a church now stands where the home of the chief of the islands stood in Saint Paul’s time. (Paul, a Jew who was a Roman citizen, was from Tarsus and spoke a Canaanite variety of the Phoenician dialect, so he probably related easily to the Maltese who still spoke Phoenician.)
The collapse of Rome was followed by invasions of the Goths, the Vandals, the Arabs, and ultimately, in 1090, the Norman knights under Count Roger I of Sicily. Roger annexed Malta to Sicily as a Norman kingdom. A hundred years later, the Germans superceded the Normans, Then the French House of Anjou kicked out the Germans and Aragon ruled for 250 years.
When Aragon and Castille were joined by marriage at the end of the fifteenth century, the Spanish Empire ruled.
From 1530 until 1789 (the French Revolution) the Knights of Saint John possessed the islands based on a grant from the king of Spain. The knights turned the islands into a fortress and even held off the forces of Suleiman the Magnificent in 1565. Their influence on the very Catholic nation of Malta is so pervasive to this day, that it is worth spending some time examining it.
The Knights of the Order of Saint John of Jerusalem was formed in 1085. From 1085 to 1309 they were also called the Hospitallers of Jerusalem. From 1309 to 1522 they were called the Knights of Rhodes. From1522 to the present they have been called the Knights of Malta. The Order was originally formed to take part in the Crusades. They were an order of monks organized to care for Christian pilgrims who fell ill on the way to the Holy Land. As pilgrims also came under attack from the Arab Infidels, they started recruiting young knights to offer protection to the pilgrims.
Documents in the Vatican trace the Order as far back is 1113, but its origins appear to be earlier.
The Vatican policy against birth control worked well enough for the peasants and farmers of Europe. After all, infant mortality was high and another set of hands to work the earth was always necessary. Where the policy failed was among the nobility and royalty. Here, daughters could always be married off to make alliances or they could be placed in a nunnery. The problem was with sons! The first could inherit the title and lands, but more than one son could be a nuisance … a contender or possible deadly rival for the top spot.
The Order became a neat answer to the problem. Knights of the Order were lay brothers who took vows of chastity. They could kill and plunder, but they couldn’t have legitimate children. Also, their testosterone could get worked off in tournaments and battles with infidels.
The Order of St. John was the perfect place for younger sons for over 700 years!
Raymond du Puy, successor to the founder, Gerard, is credited with establishing the military role of the Order. Even without an official charter, the Knights fought a number of battles. Their charter finally came about 1200, when Alfonso of Portugal drew a distinction between the lay brothers who fought and the monks who cared for the sick and provided divine service.
The Order became the strongest power in the Christian controlled Holy Land, but finally the ranks of Islam triumphed. They retreated from their headquarters at Acre to Cyprus in 1291. By this time they had extensive properties in Europe to guarantee their income. They invaded Rhodes in 1306, from which their fleet harried the Arab shipping. The rising Ottoman Empire referred to Rhodes as "that abode of the Sons of Satan.” In 1520, the Turks took Belgrade and Rhodes was next. The Christian Kings of Europe were all too busy killing each other to help the Order, so Rhodes fell to Suleiman.
With surprising charity, Suleiman allowed them to leave in good order with their possessions … even taking their cherished relic, the hand of St. John the Baptist with them.
King Charles V of Spain couldn’t bear the thought of Christendom’s strongest fighting force having no home. He offered them their choice of two properties he didn’t too much care about: Tripoli or Malta.
For seven years the knights dickered over accepting either of these as a base. Finally, out of options, they took Malta in 1530 (over the protests of the Christian inhabitants of these islands who thought that they had the word of the Pope to prevent their being passed around as possessions of Europe’s royalty). Now, owing Charles V a big favor, they helped him to fight his wars.
As a result of England’s enmity with Spain, the Order’s property in England was confiscated in 1540.
From 1551 to 1798 the Order ruled Malta and fought of the Ottoman Empire and the corsairs from Morocco and the Barbary Coast. But after the defeat of the Turks outside Vienna in 1683, they relaxed into a life of wealth and dissipation. They lost their fighting edge.
In 1798, Napoleon took Malta without a fight. The knights had become decadent in their armored fortress.
Napoleon’s troops looted the castle and churches of the Order to raise money for France’s military campaigns. Two years later the Maltese with the help of Britain and Naples forced the French out.
In 1802 the Maltese voted to become a British Crown Colony and they maintained that status on and off until they became a Republic of the British Commonwealth in 1974 and then an independent state in 1987.
From 1940 to 1943 Malta was subject to the most severe bombardment in aerial history as the Germans tried to make it unusable as a supply base and hospital for the British forces. Few signs of that severe bombing exist today. Instead, dominantly baroque architecture and building facades line the older streets while modern architecture moves into the resort areas and business districts. Most of the city, and even the villages, appear to be in good repair.
With Malta’s history, it is no wonder that the cities of the islands are filled with a mixture of architecture from the nations of Europe and North Africa.
We booked an American-sold tour of Malta and Sicily from a company called Academic Tours. Unfortunately, the tour began and ended on Saturdays. We couldn’t follow this schedule. We were finally able to arrange our arrival and departure on Sundays giving us only five days in Malta, but nine days in Sicily.
On the other hand, it meant that we had to leave home at two o’clock in the morning on Sunday and we would get home about six a.m. on Monday two weeks later.
Onward!
Valletta is the capitol and largest city of Malta, but as might be expected at the tops hills of a submerged mountain, it sits on one arm of a fjord. Across the small bays on either side of this peninsula are other towns. In fact, the shoreline of the whole island consists of rocky beaches, promontories, and fjords with houses built on the steep sides of the hills or on hilltops.
On the jutting ends of the land surrounding the two bays there are huge stone fortresses built by the Crusaders. At key points around the island there are tall stone watchtowers.
The weather at this time of the year is warm … generally in the eighties (F.). It was our luck to encounter the hottest June weather in over two hundred years. It stayed in the mid-nineties.
There are about 400,000 people in this country. They are mostly Catholics and ethnically a mixture of Norman, Arab, and Italian. Their primary income is derived from tourism, dockyards, transshipping, and fishing.
They are a very friendly people, but their families are very close-knit and private. Despite millennia of repeated invasions, they are still an island culture.
It turned out that the “tour” in Malta was a composite of local tours, each with a different guide, packaged together with a supposedly four-star hotel that would have rated a solid three stars in most of the world.
Our tour was supposed to cover most of the major sights of Malta and Gozo, but I found that they would not have time to visit the Archaeological Museum, perhaps one of the more important (to me) places to visit.
As our plane arrived we could see a land of rolling hills. Our hotel was located in the city of Sliema, which is adjacent to Valletta on the other side of a fjord. A mile-long strip of hotels and shops, called “The Strand,” faces the harbor and the docks for ferries and small boats. Many of the boats in the harbor were the traditional Maltese “luzzu,” a brightly painted fishing boat, pointed at both ends and bearing carved and painted “eyes” on either side of the prow so that the boat can find its way home.
On the other side of a small island connected by causeway to Sliema, there’s a big yacht harbor that is home to some of the most luxurious yachts in Europe … hundreds of yachts. The harbor can hold some 3,000 yachts.
For our time in Malta, our hotel included a buffet breakfast and dinner each day, so we only ate lunches out. However, the hotel restaurant was very good.
Our first day was spent exploring Valletta. The tour bus could take us only to the entry gates of the city. The narrow streets of the city permit only small delivery vans and cars to drive. The crest of a hill runs through the center of the peninsula of the city. The main streets along the length of the peninsula are about a mile long. They are Triq Ir-Repubblika … the central street with the Law Courts, the Archaeological Museum and the ruined Opera House; and Triq Il-Merkanti … the next street over where the old shops and flea market are located.
Near the entrance to the city, the Upper Barracca Gardens present a formal European appearance and a view of the Grand Harbor and the Mediterranean Sea.
It is easy to see why the Romans named the Mare Mediterrania as they did. To them and to the Greeks and Phoenicians before them this water was “the sea in the middle of the Earth.” Malta and Sicily were on the path taken by Ulysses in his wanderings after the Trojan War. After a short walk through the garden, we strolled to St. John’s Co-Cathedral.
Valletta was the first “planned city” in Europe. After the Great Siege of1565, when the Knights defended Malta from the Sulieman’s forces, they knew they would need a more defensible city and harbor. They chose the bare peninsula across the Grand Harbor and convinced the Vatican to send their architect Francesco Laparelli, to design the city. The result is that Valletta has strong walls and cliffs to defend it, straight streets along its length, and straight, narrow cross streets. The cross streets are steep … often having steps for part of their length.
At the end of Triq Ir-Repubblika is the dominating presence of Fort St. Elmo with its thick stone walls and ramparts.
From the exterior, the Conventual Church of St. John looks like a huge, bleak building with two massive, square towers dominating either side of the entrance. The building was complete in 1577 after a short four years of work. For the first 70 years, the Cathedral was a plain on the inside as on the outside … just a huge rectangular room, with four chapels on either side. On the Eastern end of the room there is a main altar in the apse. The main room is under a barrel-vaulted ceiling supported by arches. The stone arches are, in turn, supported by pilasters and buttresses and unusually thick sidewalls. (The so-called “flying buttress” as used in Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris was not invented until later).
Most of the smaller churches in Malta (and Malta claims to have a church for every day of the week) copy the style of St. John’s with its twin towers. What they cannot copy to any great extent is the interior as created in 1661 under the orders of Grand Master John Raphael Cotoner of the Knights of St. John and his brother Nicolas.
In remarkably bright color even to this day, the ceiling illustrates the life of John the Baptist. The pilasters, arches, walls, and ceilings of the chapels were transformed from the original plain stone into intricately carved flowers, scrolls, and angels; and then painted and gilded.
Each of the national sections of the order of St. John … called Langues … had its own chapel in a side niche. Each Langue was responsible for decorating its own chapel and altar. These altars are silver and marble with carved columns in the baroque style, four-foot-tall, silver candlesticks holding four-foot-tall candles, and paintings or statues with religious themes. Each chapel is dedicated to another saint, usually the patron saints of the Langues.
All of this is initially overwhelming. I have rarely seen so much money, skill and effort spent on a religious site outside of the Vatican’s Saint Peter’s.
And then I looked at the floor!
The entire floor is covered with mosaic panels about 30 inches wide and about five feet long. Under each panel is the tomb of a Knight of the Order. Each panel bears a dedication, and the Knight’s escutcheon embedded in a fanciful design, often portraying a skeleton or some symbol of the afterlife. One could spend days just wandering and staring at the floor.
It becomes clear that in all Christendom at one time the Knights were second only in wealth and political power to the Vatican.
(An interesting footnote is pertinent here. The Knights of St. John are often confused with the Knights Templar. The Knights Templar that exists today is the highest order of the York Rite of Freemasonry. Their web site says that there is no direct link between this order and the medieval Knights Templar
The medieval Knights Templar were founded in the 11th century and were called the Knights of the Temple because they took over the mosque built
on Mt. Moriah (Solomon's Temple Mount) to use as their headquarters. They called themselves the "Poor Soldiers of Jesus Christ."
This is ironic, because they became so wealthy that they were envied by
Phillip the Fair, of France. In 1312-1314 he used his influence with Pope Clement to trap Jacques DeMolay, the Grand Master of the Knights of the Temple and have him burned at the stake for heresy in 1314.
Then Phillip confiscated all the wealth of the Knights and abolished the Order. On May 2, 1312, Pope Clement V granted the property of the suppressed Templars to the Knights of St. John [Hospitallers].
Sometimes the Templars are confused with the Knights of St. John because both were founded near the same time and had the same mission, to protect the pilgrims.
The Knights of St. John had their headquarters at the Israeli port of Acre before they took over Rhodes.)
Our view of power of the Order was reinforced at our next stop, the Grand Master’s Palace. The Palace was completed in about 1576 and was the seat of the Order’s power and the home of the Grand Master until 1798 when the Order was ousted from Malta by Napoleon. (In 1792 Napoleon’s government seized all the Order’s property in France.) The Palace has courtyards, armories, apartments, council chambers, dining halls and so on. Since it is now the office of the President of the Republic, we could only see certain areas, just enough to let us know that it was REALLY palatial.
The last stop on our tour for the day was the “Malta Experience,” a sound and vision show on a wide screen that explained the history of Malta from the Stone Age through to current times. During World War II, Malta was Britain’s base for shipyards, munitions storage, and hospitals. For several years the Axis bombers attempted to destroy the island’s ability to be used as a base. The pictures and sound effects of the bombings, and of the citizens hiding in caves and cellars made the German tourists seated in the row behind us wince and gasp audibly.
Back at the hotel, we had time for an afternoon swim in the rooftop pool before dinner. We needed it! The temperature was in the mid-90s every day we were in Malta … typical August weather arriving in June.
Strolling in the residential neighborhoods of the city during the early evening we had time to see some of local life. The hucksters in their small open trucks or wagons selling produce on the streets reminded me of New York in the 1930s.
Many of the cars date from the 1950 and 1960s. There are few American brands.
Most of the balconies (gallerias) are enclosed by ornately carved wooden shutters or wrought-iron grillwork. Open balconies are usually decorated with clotheslines bearing skirts, shirts and so forth.
Old British Leyland and Bedford busses run regular routes through the island. Each of the busses is individually owned. Although they are painted the same colors on the outside … a bright red and yellow … the inside bears the unique handiwork of the owner and the dash and sun visor are covered with Saint’s medallions.
In this intensely Catholic country, every day is a “saint’s day,” and each neighborhood sets up decorated arches across the streets. Each village has a parade with icons and statues being carried through the main streets.
Except for Valletta, all the other towns have narrow winding streets inherited from the ancient times.
In the morning our bus headed for the inland cities of Mdina and Rabat. Mdina was the original capitol city of Malta in Roman times. It sits on a hilltop about 500 feet above sea level and from here defenders could see the signal fires from watchtowers placed strategically all around the island’s shores.
When the Arabs took the city in 570 CE, they extended the walls. Then in 1090, when Count Ruggerio (Roger) took the city with his Crusaders, he had a cathedral built within the walls to make the city fit for Christians.
The city, with its hilltop location and tall walls, reminds one of Carcason in central France. Like Carcason, it was virtually impregnable in its time. The city is far older than Roman times, and this is probably as good a place as any to talk about that.
The Phoenicians, who built Carthage and ruled Mediterranean trade, were not alone in their wanderings. The Jews followed them … in many cases as passengers or co-traders. The royalty and richer members of the Phoenician, Greek, and Roman worlds had a hunger for the good things in life. One of those good things was silk. Silk came from the Orient. The Jews from Greece and modern day Iraq were the traders and explorers who found the Orient and its most valuable commodity. They subsequently controlled the fabled Silk Route through Samarkand, the former Jewish Khazar Empire that sat astride the Black Sea, Salonika, and all the way to Malta. In a small neighborhood within the walled city of Mdina there is a walled compound. This compound bears the simple sign “The Old Jewish Silk Market” to identify it for tourists.
It was part of the Jewish Ghetto of Arab and Roman times, occupied by Jews from Greek Salonika who brought silk to the domain of the Christians.
Count Roger (about whom I’ll talk more extensively in the piece about Sicily) took Malta in 1090. He probably didn’t care about these small islands as much as about keeping the troublesome Arabs from attacking Sicily.
Now Count Roger and his Normans were among the most sophisticated military men of their age. They had available the latest technology and with the help of the Vatican they had arms, men and financing.
The idealists behind the Vatican walls spoke of Crusades to bring Christianity to the world, but the Normans were on the front lines. They were realists and wanted territory and their own kingdoms.
To satisfy the Vatican priests and missionaries, they built churches and cathedrals. The one they built in Mdina has scriptural messages in Arabic, Greek, and Latin on the walls to show the Normans’ “zeal” for conversion. But other than the official show, the Normans turned a blind eye to the populace.
Let the priests deal with conversion. The Normans were interested in wealth and that meant trade.
On one side of the walled city, they built a small gate, ostensibly for removing garbage from the city. To this day the gate is called the “Greek Gate.” It was the entrance and exit for the Greek Jews and North African Arabs who brought trade to the city and silk from the Orient.
Mdina was Malta’s seat of military, civil and ecclesiastical authority and the home of the island’s oldest families. Although the capital is now Valletto, the oldest families still retain residences in Mdina. Its narrow, crooked streets are not suitable for modern traffic. The balconies of the houses almost touch across them.
Immediately outside the walled city is the more sprawling suburb of Rabat. It is separated from Mdina only by a deep dry moat constructed by the Arabs.
When the Romans lived here, the two cities were one.
For us the main attractions were the Mdina Cathedral and the Catacombs of St. Paul.
From the square facing the cathedral you can see its entrance flanked by the usual two square towers with their clocks near the belfries. It was built in 1697, after the old church (built in the 12th century) was destroyed by the great earthquake of 1693. That quake shook most of the central Mediterranean.
The new church and attached seminary are beautifully decorated with carvings and paintings that represent the life of St. Paul.
A few blocks away, after walking through the blazing heat of the afternoon, we entered the relative cool of the catacombs built beneath a small church.
In Roman times, burial on open ground was forbidden and cremation was customary. The Jews did not believe in cremation, so they built catacombs to bury their dead. The Christians, many of them of Jewish descent, adopted this practice and also found that these underground warrens were places where they could hold their religious meetings out of sight of Roman authorities.
These tunnels and caves were in use until the arrival of the Arabs, but were rediscovered only in 1894. They underlie not only some churches, but also many homes in this and other Maltese cities.
We climbed down the stairs into the multi-roomed cavern. I could stand upright, but those 5’10” and taller had to stoop. We found grave troughs cut into the stone with stone headrests left at one end. We saw pillars holding up the ceiling and separating the graves of various families. The graves were reused when needed. The dried and insect-eaten remains of previous tenants were collected and placed into carved niches in the walls.
No bodies had been in these catacombs for years, but the musty smell made me feel that the occupants had not been long gone.
Back on the bus once more, we moved on to the village of Mosta and the Church of Santa Marija Assunta … the famous Mosta Dome, which can be seen from any high point on the island. At 40 meters in diameter (130 feet) it is the third or fourth largest unsupported church dome in the world. Larger domes are St. Peter’s in Rome, Hagia Sophia in Istanbul, and the dome at Xewkija on Gozo (if you believe the residents of Gozo). It was finished in 1860, almost all work being done by local volunteers.
If you think that’s the miracle of the dome, think again. The dome was pierced by a Nazi bomb during World War II when the church was full of parishioners seeking shelter. The huge bomb (about three feet in diameter) came through the roof at an angle, ricocheted around the room and skidded across the floor without exploding. The scars from this bomb still show and a replica is in an anteroom of the church.
The domed interior is like lacework done in stone.
The exterior is plain, but the entrance, styled as a Greek Temple, is flanked by the traditional Maltese clock towers and belfries.
From Mosta, we finished the tour through some Botanical Gardens and then the Ta’ Qali Crafts Center that provided us with the opportunity to buy souvenirs.
The Maltese, unlike the Sicilians we saw the following week, were rather gentle about selling souvenirs to us. This was the only incident. Furthermore, the tour stops were not plagued by the souvenir stands and hawkers we saw in Sicily at every tourist site.
The next morning we were “at liberty.” It was a chance for me to see the Archaeological Museum in Valletta.
As we passed St. John’s Cathedral, several policemen were diverting the pedestrians. On one side of the square, in a cleared area before the side entrance to the Cathedral, lay a man’s body covered with a sheet. A tourist, a pilgrim, or a worshipper on his way to the church … who could tell? The feet pointed straight up, making two little tents of the covering sheet. Two policemen stood near the body, smoking and talking. We skirted the area and passed quietly onward to the Archaeological Museum.
Recently refurbished, the museum houses a unique collection of Stone Age carvings … the famous Maltese “fat ladies” are there. Stone carvings of women with huge hips, thighs, and fat legs surmounted by tiny, breastless torsos and small heads. Some of these carvings are smaller than a finger … some are more than six feet tall.
One small figurine, about five inches long, shows a “fat lady” reclining with her head resting on the wrist of one folded arm. It is remarkably preserved and the skill of this Neolithic artist just made me hold my breath.
We spent some time looking at the wares offered in the five-block-long flea market on Triq Il-Merkanti, visited the museum of medieval armor, and had a light lunch before returning to our hotel.
Later in the afternoon, we were picked up by a tour bus that took us five blocks from our hotel to the pier for a cruise of the three harbors around Valletta. The huge cliffs and walls that surround the city and fortresses on the points of other peninsulas showed that the Arabs, the Crusaders and the Knights built well. However, there are almost no sand beaches on the islands of Malta. Rocks and a few pebble beaches are where people sun themselves and swim. A twenty-foot tall breakwater at the harbor entrance provided a diving platform for three young men who jumped wildly into the water as our boat passed and our passengers cheered.
In the evening, after dinner, we walked along the Strand. From the neighborhoods behind our row of hotels the people bring plastic chairs and folding chairs. They put them near the concrete benches along the harbor walk. Families gather, the children eating ice cream sold from the van parked by the roadside and playing tag … shouting and laughing.
Elderly people join in small groups to talk end catch their breaths from the heat of the day. The sea breeze just barely cooled all of us a little bit.
The next morning our tour bus took us across the island to the north tip of Malta where a ferry took us across the narrow channel to the island of Gozo, the second largest of the three islands that compose the nation, and perhaps the most interesting to me.
Between 3600 BCE and 2500 BCE the Neolithic inhabitants of these islands built over 50 massive temples of which 33 survive in some form. The most complete are the megalithic temple at Ggantija, and the huge Hypogeum, an underground temple and burial site that replicates features of the above ground temples.
Our first stop was at the Citadel in Gozo’s main city of Victoria. It is another 17th century walled fortress located on top of the hill dominating the small island. It now houses the Justice Court, several museums and the Cathedral. The Cathedral was built on a site previously occupied by at least three churches and two pagan temples. It most distinctive feature is the trompe d’oei painting of the ceiling’s interior that fools the eye into believing that the flat ceiling is a dome. This church is the only one on our tour that charged for entry.
From here, the tour took us to lunch, which was to be followed, not by the visit to Ggantija that I expected, but to a visitor’s center that presented the history of the island. On the way to lunch we passed a promontory that overlooked the largest stone arch I have ever seen naturally carved out of the seaside cliffs. The arch is about 500 feet tall. The small bay at its foot provides a mini-harbor for local fishermen.
After lunch, I hired a taxi to take Haya and me to Ggantija while the rest of the group went to the visitor’s center. At Ggantija there were very few visitors and we had these remarkable temples almost to ourselves.
We walked down the path from the hilltop parking lot where our taxi waited for us. Low stone walls surrounded an acre or so of the temple grounds.
In the center of the grounds the two adjacent temples cover about a quarter of an acre on a hillside. Except for the yellow wildflowers and weeds, the earth around them is bare. The golden-hued stone walls are composed of large slabs, some as much as ten feet tall (above the ground) and weighing 40 to 50 tons. There are holes drilled in the stone so that wooden posts could be planted in the walls to support roofs and doorways and to provide light and ventilation to the interiors. The tallest remaining walls are over 20 feet high.
Each temple has an entryway, a central corridor, an apse with a possible altar facing the entry, and three rooms on either side of the central corridor. Each room appears top have had some altar or platform for sacrifices or offerings.
The fact that these temples are almost 6,000 years old … older than the Egyptian pyramids or England’s Stonehenge … left me unable to talk. I could only walk around, touch the walls and wonder what these buildings might have looked like when they were built; wonder what the builders might have looked like; wonder how the priests preserved the mysteries of their inner sanctums; wonder what strange gods they worshipped; what sacrifices they made.
There is a cave on the coast of Gozo named “Calypso’s Cave.” Not only St. Paul, but also Ulysses was supposed to have been here.
Although Gozo was badly damaged by the 1693 Etna volcanic quake, the ancient temples came through unscathed.
The taxi returned us to the tour in time for us to complete our own trip through the visitor center. Then it was back on the ferry and the trip across Malta to our hotel.
A dip in the pool, an evening cocktail on the hotel's roof, and we were prepared to depart for Sicily the next morning. Air Malta would take us on the half-hour flight to Palermo.
The Maltese Lira was worth US$2.85 at this time. The hotel changed money at close to the current rate and with no conversion fee. Malta hopes to join the Common Market by the end of 2003 and begin using the Euro as its currency.
If I knew then what I know now, I would not take an organized tour of Malta. I’d do it as we did Anatolia last year. Just go there and hire local tours each day.