Friendship on a small island

Oct 27 2007 by Peter Elson, Liverpool Daily Post

Malta has revitalised itself, reports Peter Elson

ON A balmy summer evening in the small, but lively Maltese resort of St Julians, I wandered around the crowded streets, filled with many locals and holidaymakers, all out to enjoy themselves.

The throng was drawn towards music wafting through the hot night air and soon I stood on the rim of a spacious open-air dance floor.

Maltese of all ages and both sexes had come dancing to the strains of Blame It On The Bossa Nova and La Vida Loca. Strictly speaking, standards varied, but the enthusiasm was indisputable.

The friendliness I encountered at the dance on this Mediterranean island, set between southern Europe and north Africa, set the welcoming tone for my visit.

Long-drawn together through shared history during the British Empire, these two great seafaring island nations of Malta and Great Britain remain affectionately close, in spite of a somewhat painful parting after independence in 1964.

Described as one big open-air museum, the Maltese islands’ fascinating past is visible today. Malta and its islands of Gozo and Comino chart some 7,000 years of history.

Almost every vista is closed by a handsome (and usually large) baroque, domed church in the island’s ubiquitous and attractive buff-coloured limestone.

Situated at the Mediterranean’s crossroads, Malta was successively colonised by the top dogs: Phoenicians, Carthaginians and Romans (when St Paul was shipwrecked here in AD60). Later Arabs introduced citrus fruits, cotton and irrigation systems.

Arabs and British bequeathed ornamental gardens to relieve the island’s aridity. Both races also contributed courtyard buildings and fine neo-classical properties, adding to heritage like Valletta’s 1732 Manoel Theatre.

Valletta dates from 1530, when the island became home to the military-religious Order of St John, dubbed the Knights of Malta.

The Knights created the fabulous fortified city on Malta’s magnificent natural harbour, named after their Grand Master Jean de la Valette.

Bobbing around this amazing watery expanse, edged by its towering buildings, in a traditional Maltese gondola (or dghajsa), you appreciate why the Maltese are so proud of its World Heritage Site status.

“Valletta is the Mediterranean’s largest natural harbour and therefore much-coveted by every power seeking to rule the trade routes. That’s why we have the second greatest number of historical sites after Rome,” says Nicholas Borg, seasoned Malta tourism expert and general manager of Malta’s premier Corinthia St Gorg Hotel, at St Julians.

While the Arabs tolerated the island’s devotion to Roman Catholicism, the Napoleonic French occupiers did not. Maltese leaders welcomed the Royal Naval takeover in 1800, and the island became a vital staging post for Britain’s links to its empire east of Suez. Its courageous support of Britain during the siege of WWII was commemorated by King George VI awarding the island the GC in 1942.

“For decades, Malta was the first- choice destination for British people wanting a sun and beach holiday abroad, especially as 90% of Maltese speak English,” says Nicholas.

“We also drive on the left – actually, it’s usually in the middle of the road, but apart from that, Malta remains a safe place to be,” he jokes.

Another era is represented by motorcades of past British car marques: Ford Zodiacs, Morris Oxfords and Triumph Heralds chug about, preserved by the dry atmosphere. Ancient fume-belching Bedford coaches form the bus network’s backbone.