The Pope has long since curtailed demands for annual rent in raptors, and almost 70 years after Faith, Hope and Charity patrolled the skies, Her Majesty’s Royal Navy weighed anchor for the last time in 1979. The creaking bedsprings of Strait Street’s bordellos have fallen silent and Prime Minister Dom Mintoff’s firebrand of charismatic socialism no longer invites Colonel Gaddaffi to pitch his tent on the capital’s Republic Street. More recently, in 1989, at the bar in a Valletta pub called ‘The Pub’, time was fatally called on Oliver Reed’s final hellraising session… Despite these momentous passings, Juliet Rix’s surprising new Bradt guidebook shows myriad reasons to unpackage Malta and discover afresh a much-underrated Mediterranean island nation.

Simplistically marketed for its temperate climate and extended season, along with its historic British connections, for years Malta sought and found the appeal of mass tourism. However, Bradt’s Juliet Rix suggests, ‘It seems to me that Malta has been hiding its light under the bushel of mass tourism for too long… For the main island at least, its USP is surely its history – and pre history – and the remarkable sites this has left behind.’ Looking at the facts, her case is pretty strong. A 5½ millennia distant ‘temple culture’ has bequeathed Malta the world’s earliest sophisticated stone buildings, the Ġgantija Temple – now a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Later, Phoenicians, Roman’s and Arabs all left their marks both through physical, cultural and linguistic heritage. Today, perhaps the most obviously significant event in Malta’s history was the arrival of the Hospitaller Knights of St John in 1530, recently evicted from Rhodes by an irate Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent. Following the order’s success against the Turks in the Great Siege of 1565, as Rix says, ‘The Knights were the heroes of Christian Europe… and Christendom was willing to show its gratitude with financial support.’ In accordance Valletta was designed by the Pope’s own military engineer Francesco Laparelli and progressed to become a showcase of Baroque architecture. When Disraelli visited in 1830, he described Europe’s smallest capital as ‘a city of palaces built by gentlemen for gentlemen’ and for visitors, despite the WW2 attentions of Mussolini and Hitler, this remains the case. As well as the main island’s capital, superlative Grand Harbour, surrounding Three Cities, ‘silent city’ of Mdina and villages beyond, Rix explores the contrasting relaxed ambience of neighbouring Gozo, only a ferry or short floatplane flight away. Across all three islands, activities such as birdwatching, diving, swimming and walking are all covered along with up-to-date hotel, restaurant and practical travel information.

Juliet Rix is a professional journalist and has worked all of her life in print, radio and television. As well as spending a couple of years as a BBC southeast Asia correspondent she has written on travel – as well as other subjects – for most of the UK’s broadsheet nationals.

Title: Malta and Gozo
Author: Juliet Rix
Publisher: Bradt Travel Guides
Publication: May 2010
Price: £12.99
ISBN: 978 1 84162 312 2