Valletta, Malta's capital, is a 16th -century rarity -- a planned city -- that has changed little over the centuries. Because it was planned for military purposes, its walls are also bastions that present stone cliffs to a seaborne visitor -- or incader.
Many of the streets are steep enough to rise in steps. Street names -- Old Theatre, Old bakery, Old Mint, old Treasury, Old hospital -- point back through history to their beginnings.
If the Knights of St. John, who built the city, had had their way, most of their original beuildings -- palaces all -- would have been all together, campus-style. But military need dictated that they be sited strategically, inland or on the shoreline, wit hin the district that each grouping of Knights was responsible for defending. So a visitor in Valletta comes upon them throughout the city.
The city's character still reflects the nature of the Knights -- ana unusual amalgam of an aristocratic disdain that tended to isolate themfrom any but their own, and a doctrinal Christian humility that kept them dedicated for seven centuries to the welfa re of pilgrims adn other travelers. The order originated in Jerusalem early in the 11th century, establishing a hospital and a chapel there for the poor and sick pilgrims to the Holy Sepulchre.
The Crusades led the Saracens to drive them from Jerusalem; and though, for another five centuries, Saracens and Turks pushed them ever westward, from Acre to Cyprus to Rhodes to Crete, and in 1530 to Malta, they remained a cohesive religious and military force. In 1565, a large military expedition sent by the Turkish sultan, Suleiman the Magnificent, attacked Malta, was repulsed, and retreated when relief arrived from Sicily. This campaign -- in Maltese history, "The Great Siege" -- made it apparent to t he Knights that a defendable city should be built on the peninsula that had given the invading forces strategic command of the island. Five years later, the city was complete -- planned by an Italian military engineer, Francesco Laparelli, a colleague of Michelangelo; built in the main by his assistant, Maltese architect Gerolamo Cassar; and named for the Grand Master of the KNights of St. John who initiated the plan, Jean Parisot de la Vallette.
Inside the fortification Valletta is a city of superbly decorated churches and palaces. Malta is a limestone island, and every house, every building, is of golden limestone. Throughout, on buildings grand and humble, enclosed balconies of painetd wood pro claim the city's Renaissance birth.
Among the original buildings are the auberges, convents in which young Knights lived collegiately and where travelers could find food and shelter. Most are public buildings -- museums, and the offices of the Prime Minister. The Knights' major hospital, th e Sacra Infermeria, is Valletta's conference center; the Palace of the Grand Masters is the seat of Parliament and the President's office. St. Jogn's Co-Cathedral contains elaborate carvings in stone, the inlaid, multicolored marble tombstones of the Knig hts, and Caravaggio's famous "The Beheading of St. John the Baptist".
When Napoleon took Malta over in 1798, he tossed the Knights out -- gave them three days to leave, and they did, and never returned -- but Nelson's blockade straved the French out and Britain took charge in 1800, leaving officially in 1979, though Malta b ecame independent in 1964.
(SOURCE: MALTA: Quarterly Newsletter, No 1, April 1995, published by Malta National Tourist Office - North America)