Malta
As breakfast was announced this morning we entered Valetta harbor, one of the great natural harbors of the world. Founded in 1566, its magnificent network of fortifications is a perfect example of Renaissance architecture. Valetta is the modern capital of Malta, an island community strategically placed in the middle of the Mediterranean, with Africa to the south and the toe of Italy to the north, marking the divide between the eastern and western Mediterranean. Malta, needless to say, has attracted settlers over the centuries. Phoenicians, Carthaginians, Romans, Arabs, Normans, Spanish, the Knights of St John, and latterly, the British, have all left their mark. They drive on the left and have red pillar boxes but speak a Semitic language and are devout Catholics. It seems incongruous to hear the priest pray in Maltese to Alla, but the Maltese refer to the Virgin Mary as Madonna. Malta was one of ten new nations to join the European Union in May of this year.
Their emblem, the Maltese Cross derives from the Knights of St John, the Knights Hospitaller, founded to care for the sick and wounded on pilgrimage to the Holy Places. Driven out of the Levant, they fell back on Rhodes before finding refuge in Malta for the token rent of a Maltese falcon, paid annually to the Emperor Charles V. Their cathedral church in Valetta houses numerous artistic treasures, including Caravaggio’s The beheading of St John the Baptist (1608). The heroic resistance of the Maltese islanders to German and Italian aerial bombardment during the Second World War resulted in the unique award of the George Cross to a community rather than an individual. It is this George Cross that has been incorporated into the Maltese flag since independence from the British in 1964. Our exploration of Valletta also included a private view of the Casa Rocca Piccola, a sixteenth-century palace now home to the 9th Marquis de Piro who revealed the property to us room by room, as well as of the Grandmaster's Palace.
As breakfast was announced this morning we entered Valetta harbor, one of the great natural harbors of the world. Founded in 1566, its magnificent network of fortifications is a perfect example of Renaissance architecture. Valetta is the modern capital of Malta, an island community strategically placed in the middle of the Mediterranean, with Africa to the south and the toe of Italy to the north, marking the divide between the eastern and western Mediterranean. Malta, needless to say, has attracted settlers over the centuries. Phoenicians, Carthaginians, Romans, Arabs, Normans, Spanish, the Knights of St John, and latterly, the British, have all left their mark. They drive on the left and have red pillar boxes but speak a Semitic language and are devout Catholics. It seems incongruous to hear the priest pray in Maltese to Alla, but the Maltese refer to the Virgin Mary as Madonna. Malta was one of ten new nations to join the European Union in May of this year.
Their emblem, the Maltese Cross derives from the Knights of St John, the Knights Hospitaller, founded to care for the sick and wounded on pilgrimage to the Holy Places. Driven out of the Levant, they fell back on Rhodes before finding refuge in Malta for the token rent of a Maltese falcon, paid annually to the Emperor Charles V. Their cathedral church in Valetta houses numerous artistic treasures, including Caravaggio’s The beheading of St John the Baptist (1608). The heroic resistance of the Maltese islanders to German and Italian aerial bombardment during the Second World War resulted in the unique award of the George Cross to a community rather than an individual. It is this George Cross that has been incorporated into the Maltese flag since independence from the British in 1964. Our exploration of Valletta also included a private view of the Casa Rocca Piccola, a sixteenth-century palace now home to the 9th Marquis de Piro who revealed the property to us room by room, as well as of the Grandmaster's Palace.
