THE PHOTO ESSAY

MALTA – A WARM CLIMATE AND THREE WORLD

By Michael Doherty

Michael Doherty is a film and television editor based in Toronto. He is also an avid traveller. The photos and commentary are from his visit to Malta in 2018.

A WARM CLIMATE AND THREE WORLD HERITAGE SITES

Malta, the world’s 10th-smallest country in area, has a population of just 515,000. I spent a week there in Sliema, just across the bay from the old town of Valletta. Valletta is Malta’s capital, and fittingly, the smallest national capital in the European Union.

Malta is an archipelago 80 kilometres from southern Italy across the Malta Channel. It consists of three islands of which only two are inhabited. The islands are dominated by limestone formations, and much of their coastlines consist of steep or vertical limestone cliffs indented by bays, inlets, and coves.

Due to the strategic importance of its location in the Mediterranean, it has been occupied and influenced by many cultures over the past 8,000 years. These include the Phoenicians, Romans, Greeks, Arabs, Normans, Sicilians, Swabians, Aragonese, Hospitallers, French, and British. Traces of the different cultures are found all over the tiny country and are definitely worth exploring.

These days, Maltese and English are the official languages. Malta and Gozo can easily be toured in open top buses, which allow all day hop-on and hopoff access. I visited in the summer, which guaranteed sunshine and high temperatures every day.