There is so much crammed into the compact area of La Valletta. Having admired its old houses from the outside we wanted to see their interiors and get a glimpse of how the Maltese aristocracy live.  The casa Rocca Piccola, otherwise known as the Messina palace, is owned by the Marquis Nicholas de Piro and dates from 1580. It is now open to the public and is very well presented. I would have loved to have attended a dinner party in its elegant dining room which transported us to a more leisurely century. I especially loved seeing the galleriji or wooden balconies encircling the house from the inside.

There are several museums in La Valletta and we managed to see the following:

The Grand Master’s palace, State rooms and armoury. Every Knight of Saint John on his death bed would bequeath his suit of armour to the grand master and once there were 25,000 such suits.  Napoleon pinched a lot of them but what remains is still remarkable!

Looking at loads of flintlocks can be a bit exhausting after a while, no matter how finely detailed they are. They are paradoxically truly artistic instruments of war in a way that today’s guided missiles hardly are!

The Fine Arts museum housed in the former admiralty is full of interesting paintings of Maltese scenes and it has a fine collection of Italian baroque painter Mattia Preti’s works. As mentioned in my previous post Preti was adopted by the Maltese and contributed to the decoration of some of their most spectacular buildings like Saint John’s co-cathedral.

I was also surprised to find water-colours by Edward Lear (who loved Malta). Absolutely no nonsense here!

There was also a fabulous picture of the Grand Harbour by Turner (who never actually visited Malta.)

I was particularly interested in Malta’s archaeological museum which gave us much insight into the fascinating Neolithic temples and burial sites we would visit.

Some of the earliest known representations of the human figure are here including the famous ‘sleeping lady of Malta’.

Clearly in those prehistoric times fat and well-endowed women were particularly prized as they represented fertility figures. No slim-fits here!

It’s good that all these museums are maintained by the ‘Heritage Malta’ government department. There was a time when Malta was  known just as a sun-and-beach holiday destination and, unfortunately, its rich heritage was neglected. Today the islands’ historical monuments are being revalued and, with the help of funds from European Union, there’s a full scale restoration going on in the island.

The fortifications, for example, are looking more splendid than ever.

Like many Italian seaside resorts, Rimini for example with its imposing Malatesta temple and Amalfi, once one of Italy’s great maritime republics (recall the other three?) Malta is equally worth visiting because of its fascinating heritage just as much for its sun and sand (though, actually, there isn’t too much of the latter, as we found out…)