After a long history of conquerors, Malta's "people are fashioning their own story" - Conde Nast Traveller
Malta has done it again! Our stunning islands were featured in a Conde Nast Traveller article just two days ago, in which writer Rick Jordan sings the country’s praises, touching on historic points of Malta’s past as he walks through some of the busiest, quietest, and most quaint parts of the island.
“Plunked in the middle of the Mediterranean, Malta has been squabbled over by empires for millennia. But today its people are fashioning their own story,” he starts off. And it’s totally true. While retaining our very rich history (and being very proud about it, too), we’ve certainly modernised our lifestyle and culture along the years.
“The nation lies on the periphery of Europe but at the heart of the Mediterranean, a palimpsest of mysterious standing stones and Roman remains, colonial sea battles and Parisian-style shop signs, all stitched together by flinty drystone walls.” Yup. We’re fancy and down to earth like that.
Along his walkthrough of the island, Jordan suggests visiting the Silent City of Mdina and we couldn’t agree more. “In the evening, visit the old capital of Mdina, an unspoiled Baroque city rising above the fields like a painted backdrop from El Cid. Many of Malta's oldest families still live here, gathering at Fontanella café on the bastion walls for chocolate cake.” Spoken like a true local!
“One morning I take a bus south to a fishing village with the throat-catching Arabic name of Marsaxlokk and walk past industrial chimneys and swirls of wildflowers to St. Peter's Pool, where teenagers jump off pancake splatters of rock into the water below.”
And like so many before him, Jordan can’t get enough of the glorious capital that is Valletta. “I'm drawn back to Valletta again and again, to the sepia streets that unwind past scuffed doorways, the roads that fall and rise in parabolic curves for almost the entire length of the city. Vintage shop signs act as landmarks; it's a typographic urban safari to spot handmade designs from the city's heyday, the 1920s through the 1950s.”
“Not long ago, as anyone will tell you, Valletta was dead after dark. Now there are natural wines at Cru and creative spins on island ingredients at Noni. Strait Street, once a beacon for brawling sailors, now has some nice cocktail bars—though none as fun as Café Society, on steps leading down to the waterfront.”
During his time on the island, he also experienced something very popular here but less so in other cultures. “One afternoon during my most recent visit, I am startled by the sudden sound of explosions. No one else seems concerned. Following the noise, I realize they are daytime fireworks, asterisks of smoke blooming in the sky.” A feast day will do that to someone unaware of the tradition. Heck – we still get startled, too so we can’t really blame him.
“It's a saint's day parade, a church lit up with strings of lights, mounds of newspaper confetti like snowdrifts, a swaying procession of hooded medieval figures in Nikes—trumpeters hooting like Sidney Bechet, everyone happily oblivious to anything else. Malta is an island full of sounds and sweet airs, gunpowder and bells; an island intent on doing its own thing, no matter what the world throws at it.”