Day broke in a blaze of gold across the fortified hill town of Mdina. From the terrace of the Verdala Wellness Hotel, I felt the first rays of a warm October day as I sipped coffee and peered out over countryside that staggered up to a perfectly etched dome on a hillside. On the distant horizon, the sea glimmered.
This adults-only, five-star spa escape is just the latest newcomer to Malta’s ancient capital. And it’s a beauty – a three-tiered temple of light and harmoniously-designed space, reflecting the landscape and ever-shifting clouds in mirrored walls and water features. The former Grand Hotel Verdala, where Roger Moore kicked back while filming Shout at the Devil in the 1970s, has been thrust into the 21st century.
Cocooned in its silent spa, featuring a hydrotherapy pool, saunas, a meditation zone and a salt cave, the buzz of Mdina felt a million miles away. I squeezed in a pre-breakfast swim in the infinity pool that hovers above the ridge before heading out to explore.
Film-set good looks and 7,000 years of history
A short walk took me through the backstreets of Rabat, Mdina’s unsung neighbour. Things were quiet until I hit the baroque Mdina Gate, where coaches jostled for space alongside horse-drawn carriages. Everyone wants a slice of this cinematic little city and it’s obvious why. Ringed by hefty ramparts and a drystone ditch where landscaped gardens now flourish, Mdina is an open textbook of 7,000 years of history. Bronze Age settlers, Phoenicians, Romans, Arabs and the gallant Knights of St John, who rebuilt its fortifications high and mighty in the 17th century, have all made their mark.
Sunlight illuminated Mdina’s cat’s-cradle of alleys and piazzas, lined with gold-stone townhouses that constantly lifted my gaze to gallarijas, the enclosed wooden balconies that are so distinctly Maltese. Mdina’s film-set good looks haven’t gone unnoticed. Each year visitor numbers grow, and celebrities like Lady Gaga and Mel Gibson have recently been spotted roaming its lanes.
But for all the exposure, there were still surprises. Like Gustav Café, perched atop the two-storey medieval Palazzo Falson and only revealed by crossing a bougainvillea-swaddled, fountain-dotted inner courtyard. Climb an ornate stone staircase and some of the most entrancing views over Mdina’s spires and domes crack open. It was here that I met Mario Cacciottolo, former BBC journalist, award-winning guide and founder of Dark Malta Tours, which spill the beans on the island’s murder, mysteries, strange tales and spooks. Over honey-laced walnut cake and coffee, we talked Mdina.
“With the boom in popularity, you need to plan wisely to get the best out of Mdina. Timing is important,” said Mario. “I run my tours in the evening, between 7pm and 9pm, when the backstreets are dark, atmospheric and far quieter than during the day. Officially Mdina’s population is 250, but the locals got together, counted themselves and came up with just 84.” With up to 1.5m visiting Mdina each year, it makes for a quite astonishing tourist-to-local ratio.
“For such a tiny city, there’s so much history here,” he added. “Even if it’s busy, you can go just beyond the walls to less-explored spots like Domvs Romana with its Roman mosaics and marble statues. Or explore the side streets in old Rabat, which feel real and lived in. Here you’ll find the Santo Spirito Hospital with its wooden window, La Ruota (The Wheel) where babies were once abandoned, and the grotto where St Paul stayed after being shipwrecked en route to Rome in AD 60.”
A cobbled step from Gustav Café is Bastion Square, where views ripple across half the island. Here day-trippers posed on the ramparts for photos that hoover up Instagram likes. “Mdina was built high in the heart of the island so you could see invading pirates from afar,” said Mario. “It was Malta’s most important city for centuries, but this sequence was broken by the Knights of St John, who needed the sea.”
We dodged crowds as we picked our way through streets past the domed, twin-spired St Paul’s Cathedral. It’s a lavishly frescoed baroque stunner, built on the site of a villa where St Paul is said to have converted Roman governor Publius to Christianity. On nearby Pjazza Mesquita, Mario showed me the emerald green-doored house that starred as Littlefinger’s Brothel in the fifth episode of the first season of Game of Thrones, pointing out where Jaime Lannister rode on horseback.
More intriguing, however, were the less-obvious details we unearthed pounding the backstreets, like the arched, mullioned Siculo-Norman windows, fancy door knockers polished to a sheen, and curved alleys that allowed knights to safely fire bow and arrow. In a nod to nearby North Africa, there are Arabic mashrabiya, wooden lattice screens that allowed residents to spy on the street below.
As we wander, Mario regaled me with dark stories such as the one about Katerina, Mdina’s headless ghost bride. He told of a beautiful maiden, betrothed to be wed centuries ago. A Knight of St John took a fancy to her. When Katerina rebuffed him, he forced himself upon her. In retaliation, she stabbed him with a dagger, accidentally killing him. Katerina was sentenced to beheading for her crime. She begged to marry her beloved before being executed and went from altar to chopping block within minutes.
“It gets stranger,” said Mario. “In 1979, a man named Bill McGregor took a Polaroid photo here and a vision of a headless bride wearing a long white dress appeared. Legend has it she still haunts Mdina’s streets and pesters happy couples in jealous fury.”
A wave of reinvention
These backstreets are now seeing a wave of reinvention, with cool supper clubs, bars and boutique hotels opening in revamped palazzi at a rate of knots. There is six-suite Palazzo Bifora, putting a contemporary spin on a 14th-century palazzo that was once home to a knight of Malta. Now you can do a vanishing act at its rooftop pool and in its Med-fusion restaurant Lumière. Right opposite is Palazzo Mangion, a grand wreck of a building slated imminently for conversion into a luxury 25-room hotel. Behind the makeover is the Xara Collection, the brains behind the reimagined 17th-century Xara Palace and Michelin-starred restaurant De Mondion.
Just steps away from Palazzo Bifora is The Medina, a Norman residence that’s also part of its portfolio. Its inner courtyard has a riad feel, with foliage enswathing an inner courtyard. The mezze menu has whispers of Malta and North Africa, with designed-for-sharing dishes like falafel with whipped sheep’s cheese, smoky baba ghanoush and grilled halloumi with warm honey, roasted vegetables, hummus and coriander.
Nudging up against Mdina, Rabat receives just a trickle of its visitors, but there is a subtle undercurrent of reinvention here, too. The Grotto Tavern, in a candlelit cave that served as a Second World War bunker, been a fixture on the dining scene since 1962, but chef Nikolai Abela has zhuzhed up its menu, striking up relationships with local farmers and fishermen. Expect the likes of raviolo of seafood with dashi and seaweed, and Maltese lamb with aubergine, za’atar, molasses and lentils.
A few minutes’ walk away is recently opened The Confession, where mixologist James Aquilina combines his passions for religious antiques and cocktails in one of Malta’s hippest bars that feels every inch like a church. Here you can sink a Maltese Falcon (vodka, prickly pear liqueur and syrup, orange juice and bitters) beneath an altarpiece of the Virgin and child.
It’s a highly original place for drinks before dinner back at Verdala’s Griffin Brasserie. In the embers of sunset, I took a seat in the softly-lit restaurant, where the farm-to-fork food is at once nutritious and delicious. The menu is overseen by Victor Borg, a judge on Malta’s MasterChef with plenty of experience working in Michelin-starred kitchens, and his sidekick, Brady Dalli.
Flavours were clean and bright. I mopped up herby, citrusy dips with homemade focaccia before a dainty starter of zucchini flowers prepared three ways, followed by a knockout main of smoky wild sea bass with tomato confit, aubergine caviar, black olives and chèvre.
After dinner, I nursed a glass of full-bodied Maltese syrah red wine by an open fire on the terrace. Cicadas still strummed in mid-October and there was a faint glitter of stars in a sky of deepening blue. Somewhere, in the darkest back alleys of Mdina, loved-up couples were being photobombed by a jealous, headless ghost bride.