Here are the handful of photos that survived my camera’s near-assassination at the hands of Valletta’s cobblestones.
This is the beaten path in Valletta:
This is us leaving it:
These are a few specimens of the ubiquitous Maltese balconies:
Around lunchtime, we went hunting for food. All the shops were mysteriously closed. We ended up eating milkshakes for lunch because it was all we could find. Later, we learned that Malta, true to its Italian influence, does siestas. A lot of things close between eleven and two.
I’m sorry I don’t have more pictures of Valletta. My camera seems to have recovered now, but it has amnesia surrounding its near-death experience. What I can offer is a brief history of Valletta. There wasn’t much there until the lead-up to the Siege of Malta, when the knights, as they hurriedly fortified the island, knocked down the old watchtower and built Fort St. Elmo in its place. Fort St. Elmo was pounded to rubble by the siege, but in the aftermath, the knights refortified the area and established their capital there. The city was named Valletta for Jean Parisot de la Valette, the Grand Master who had seen them through the siege. The architecture within the Old City is mostly Baroque, with some Neoclassical and Mannerist (and a fair amount of British Imperial, methinks, though Wikipedia doesn’t mention it) sprinkled in. It’s a UNESCO world heritage site.
Here’s the Valletta skyline as seen from the balcony of Anna’s room:
