Country · 2 guides
Nowhere else can you stand in a temple older than the pyramids in the morning and swim off a Baroque harbour wall by lunchtime.
Malta is a three-island archipelago in the middle of the Mediterranean, 80km south of Sicily and small enough to cross by bus in an hour. Its capital, Valletta, is a walled Baroque city built by the Knights of St John after the Great Siege of 1565, and the countryside around it holds stone temples raised a thousand years before the pyramids. Add limestone sea cliffs, a swimmable coast from May to October and English as an official language, and it packs more into 316 square kilometres than almost anywhere in Europe.
Malta in numbers
Plan your tripThe top of our Malta guide, in ranked order.
Attraction-by-attraction guides to 1 city in Malta, each one mapped.
Trip planner
The best walking weather of the year — warm days, green valleys and wildflowers on the garigue, with the sea still too cool for most swimmers until late May.
Hot, dry and reliably cloudless, regularly into the mid-30s°C. The sea is at its warmest and the village festa season is in full swing, but shade is scarce and the beaches are busiest.
Arguably the sweet spot: the sea holds its summer warmth well into October while the crowds thin out. The first real rain usually arrives in November.
Mild rather than cold, typically around 15°C, and the wettest, windiest stretch of the year. Too cool for swimming, but ideal for walking Valletta and Mdina without the heat or the queues.
The essential loop, all of it doable on buses and harbour ferries from a single base in Valletta or Sliema.
Malta's prehistoric sites in rough chronological order — a genuinely world-class run of UNESCO-listed megalithic architecture, and the reason many people come.
Slow down on the two smaller islands. Worth an overnight on Gozo rather than a day trip, which is what most visitors regret.
Late spring and early autumn. April to June gives warm, walkable weather and green countryside, while September and October keep the sea at its warmest with far fewer people than August. Midsummer is hot, crowded and short on shade; winter is mild and quiet but too cool for swimming.
Four to five days covers Valletta, the Three Cities, Mdina and a temple site or two without rushing. Allow a week if you want to give Gozo a proper overnight rather than a day trip, or if you plan to spend real time swimming.
No. The bus network reaches nearly everything a visitor wants and the whole country is barely 30km end to end, so many people never rent. A car helps for the remote south and west, or if you are staying on Gozo. Bear in mind that Malta drives on the left, the roads are narrow and busy, and parking in Valletta and Sliema is difficult.
The Knights of St John and the walled cities they built, prehistoric temples older than the pyramids, one of Europe's great natural harbours, and a limestone coast that is swimmable for roughly half the year. It is also a long-standing film location, standing in for ancient Rome, Troy and King's Landing.
Yes. English is an official language alongside Maltese, a legacy of British rule that lasted until 1964. Signage, menus and museum labelling are routinely in English, and you can travel the whole country without a word of Maltese.
Malta uses the euro. It has been a member of the European Union since 2004, joined the eurozone in 2008, and is part of the Schengen Area, so travel from most of mainland Europe involves no border check.
Pastizzi — flaky pastries filled with ricotta or mushy peas — are the everyday snack, sold from hole-in-the-wall shops. Look also for ftira, a flattish sourdough loaf dressed with tuna, capers and tomato; rabbit stew, which Maltese families traditionally eat as a shared fenkata; and lampuki, the dorado that shows up on menus in autumn.
History, swimming and short-hop island trips.
