While walking in the Maltese countryside, one may come across a milestone with engravings that indicate the distance from Valletta, or some other town in Malta.

Back in the day, these milestones were used to indicate distances between important locations all around the island, with one or two found in each town. Rural areas had a few more milestones, as they functioned to help British sailors and soldiers return to more familiar towns and cities from these areas. In fact, rural Mġarr had a whopping seven milestones.

As Malta was under the British rule when they were created, the distance unit used on these stones, called ‘plieri tal-mili’ in Maltese, was miles, rather than the kilometres used today.

However, as World War II approached, the British soldiers were also aware of the help milestones could offer an invading enemy. Planning for an invasion, a strategy codenamed ‘Cyclone’ involved the removal of any information relating to street or locality names and directions from public areas. In the case of the milestones, this meant chiselling off the numbers showing the distance from other localities, or in same cases, all the words engraved on the stone.

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Thus, some milestones with incomplete information can still be found around the island – a reminder of Malta’s military history.

Have you ever spotted any of these milestones?