The Auberge de Baviere

If you wander down to the Marsamxett side of Valletta, close to Fort St Elmo and the Breakwater Bridge, you’ll find the former Auberge de Baviere. It didn’t start out as a knights’ hostel, in fact, it was originally a palazzo. The private residence of the Portuguese Balì, (Balì was an official title) Fra Gaspare […]

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The Auberge d’Aragon

If you were a brand new Knight of St John, fresh from Aragon, Catalonia, or Navarre and just arrived in Malta, you would have found a place to stay at the Auberge d’Aragon. There were eight of these ‘great inns’, and the Auberge d’Aragon is the oldest surviving one. While some might consider it plain, […]

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The Auberge de Provence

Situated on Republic Street in Valletta, not too far from Renzo Piano’s City Gate and the Old Opera Ruins, is the Auberge de Provence. As you might expect from a military order, the Knights of St John were a well organised bunch. The knights grouped their members by language and culture into administrative groups, called […]

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The Auberge de Castille

Taking pride of place at Valletta’s highest point, the Auberge de Castille sits at the top of the bastions overlooking Floriana and the Grand Harbour. It’s a splending building, majestic and dignified, and like many of the older buildings in the city, it bears the fingerprints of the knightly order that once called Malta its […]

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Granaries by St Elmo

A 10-minute walk from Auberge de Baviere, moving across the fortifications with the view of Tigne Point to your left and the Breakwater to your right, will take you to the magnificent Fort St Elmo and its adjacent Granaries. Essentially, the Granaries are huge underground silos that were cut in rock following orders of the […]

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Triton Fountain

Triton Fountain A spectacular city deserves a spectacular entrance, and it’s difficult to find a landmark with a more intriguing backstory than the Triton Fountain. Guarding the entrance to the city, the fountain  was conceived and created by two artists, Vincent Apap and Victor Anastasi, and is considered one of the most important examples of […]

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Siege Bell Memorial

Siege Bell Memorial If you look down from the terrace at the Lower Barrakka Garden, you can’t miss the massive bell overlooking the Breakwater Bridge. The Siege Bell Memorial gives rise to a lot of questions from tourists, who invariably first react by whipping out their camera – because really, a huge random bell that […]

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Victoria Gate

Victoria Gate Guarding the lower entrance to the city is Victoria Gate, at the bottom of the steps leading to  Bridge Bar and St Barbara Bastion. Although not the main entrance to the city, the gate remains as imposing as the sovereign it was named for. As hinted by the name, Victoria Gate was built […]

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