Things To Do in Mdina Malta

The Silent City

Mdina is known as the Silent City, and the name reflects a reality. The walled city that served as Malta's capital before Valletta was built is now inhabited by only a few hundred people, and outside the brief windows of peak visitor arrival, its lanes of golden limestone are genuinely quiet. Cars are banned except for residents, and the medieval and Baroque architecture within the Arab-period walls stands in an almost uninterrupted state. The experience of walking Mdina after the day visitors have left and the light is turning on the honey-colored stone is among the most atmospheric available anywhere in the Mediterranean.

Architecture and History

Mdina's origins as a fortified settlement predate Roman occupation, and the layers of construction that followed — Arab, Norman, Aragonese, Knights — are stratified through the walls and buildings in a way that makes the city a physical record of Mediterranean political history. The Cathedral of St Paul, rebuilt in the Baroque style after an earthquake destroyed the earlier Norman church in 1693, is the visual and religious center of the city. The Palazzo Falson — a Norman palace now operating as a private museum of Maltese noble life — gives the best sense of how the aristocratic families who have always dominated Mdina actually lived.

Views and Setting

Mdina sits on a ridge in the center of Malta at 253 metres, and on clear days the views from its bastions extend across the entire island and out to sea. The panorama from the Bastion Square at the city's northwestern corner is the most expansive, taking in the patchwork of farmland, the coastline, and the distant horizon in a sweep that makes the scale of the island immediately legible. At dusk, when the light softens and the tourist coaches have gone, Mdina operates at a frequency entirely its own.

The Silent City, the Cathedral and Mdina's Medieval Character

Mdina, the former capital of Malta and known as the Silent City for its near-absence of traffic, contains within its walls a resident population of around 300 people in an urban environment whose medieval and baroque fabric has been preserved largely intact. The city was founded by the Normans on an Arab fortified settlement that itself occupied a Bronze Age and Roman site, and the accretion of periods is visible in the walls, gateways, and buildings within. The St Paul's Cathedral, a baroque building designed by Lorenzo Gafà and completed in 1702 on the site of a Norman cathedral, contains paintings by Mattia Preti and a museum in the adjacent chapter house with one of the most significant collections of Maltese silver, prints, and religious art in the islands. The Palazzo Falson Historic House Museum, a 15th-century merchant's house containing the collections of a 20th-century Maltese nobleman — arms, silver, paintings, and library — preserved as found after his death, is the most intimate house museum in Malta and one of the most atmospheric in the Mediterranean. The main Mdina Gate, rebuilt in baroque style in 1724, provides the formal entrance to the city from the adjacent town of Rabat.

Rabat, the Catacombs and the Town Below Mdina's Walls

Rabat, the town that grew outside Mdina's walls and effectively continues it at street level, contains sites of equal archaeological significance but receives far fewer visitors than the walled city above. The St Paul's Catacombs, one of the largest Christian catacomb complexes outside Rome with over 2,000 square metres of underground galleries dating from the 4th to 8th centuries, provide one of the most extensive experiences of early Christian burial practice in the central Mediterranean. The adjacent St Agatha's Catacombs, smaller but with surviving frescoes from the 12th to 15th centuries, add a visual dimension absent from the more visited complex. The Roman Villa Museum at Rabat, built over the in situ remains of a 1st-century AD Roman townhouse, displays mosaic floors and artefacts from the site in a museum whose collection documents the Roman town of Melite that occupied the site before Mdina was fortified. The fruit and vegetable market in Rabat's main square and the pastizzi shops on the streets between Rabat and Mdina give the combined settlement a functioning neighbourhood character that the Silent City alone cannot provide.

The Dingli Cliffs, the Countryside and Malta's Western Interior

The Dingli Cliffs, 8 kilometres southwest of Mdina and accessible by bus or bicycle, are the highest point in Malta at 253 metres above sea level and provide the most dramatic coastal scenery in the island: sheer limestone walls falling directly to the Mediterranean in a straight cliff line that extends for several kilometres without beach or development. The Verdala Palace, visible from the cliff road and set in the Buskett woodland — the only significant grove of trees in Malta, planted by the Knights of St John as a hunting reserve — is a 16th-century cardinal's summer residence whose forest setting is entirely unlike the bare limestone landscape that surrounds it. The Clapham Junction cart ruts near Dingli, parallel grooves worn into the limestone plateau by ancient wheeled vehicles over millennia and extending to the cliff edge in some places, are one of the most puzzling prehistoric features in Malta and the most extensive example of this phenomenon on the island. The countryside between Mdina and the Dingli Cliffs, with its terraced fields of carob, fig, and olive trees and the characteristic Maltese farmhouses of limestone block construction, presents a rural landscape whose character has changed relatively little since the 18th century.