Three days in Malta and Gozo without a car

Why you probably do not need one

Malta is about twenty-seven kilometres end to end. Every bus route on the island passes through the terminus outside Valletta’s City Gate, which makes the capital both the thing you came to see and the interchange you will use to see everything else. Gozo is reached by a ferry that runs frequently and takes about twenty-five minutes.

The case for a car is beaches, the west coast, and getting anywhere quickly at rush hour. The case against is that the historic towns — the four in this piece — are all places where a car is a liability: Mdina bans them outright, Valletta’s centre is largely pedestrian, and the Three Cities are a maze of one-way lanes with nowhere to park at the end.

What follows is three days that work entirely on public transport, each ending somewhere worth being at the end of a day.

Day one — Valletta

Start in the capital, because everything else makes more sense afterwards. It is a planned sixteenth-century city built by a military order that had just survived a siege, and once you have seen the harbour from Upper Barrakka you understand why every other town here is on a hill behind walls.

Give it a full day on foot. It is a kilometre long, so the distances are nothing; the time goes on the interiors and on standing still looking at the harbour. Buses from anywhere on the island end at the gate, and the last ones back run late.

Finish on the ridge for sunset, or take the ferry across the Grand Harbour and look back at it from the other side.

Day two — the Three Cities, by boat

The ferry from the Valletta Waterfront to Birgu takes about ten minutes and is the best-value crossing in the country: the approach shows you the shape of three fortified peninsulas better than any map or viewpoint.

Birgu, Senglea and Cospicua were where the Knights lived before Valletta existed, and where the Great Siege of 1565 was actually won. They are quieter than the capital, more lived-in, and harder work underfoot — two ridges with the water on both sides, which means climbing out of a marina, walking the high ground, dropping to sea level to cross, and climbing again.

This is the day that most rewards being unhurried. Have lunch on the Birgu marina, walk the Collachio in the afternoon when the lanes are in shade, and end on the point of Senglea looking straight back at Valletta.

Getting back is either the ferry from Senglea or a bus; both run into the evening, and the ferry is the better ending.

Day three — Mdina and Rabat, or Gozo

You have a choice on the third day, and it depends on whether you would rather see the old capital or leave the island.

Mdina is a half-day, and a good one. Buses from Valletta stop in Rabat, a few minutes’ walk from the bridge; cars cannot go in, so everyone arrives on foot through the same gate. It is a walled town of about three hundred residents with the silence to match — but only outside the middle of the day, when the coaches are parked outside. Go early or go after six, and pair it with Rabat’s catacombs, which are outside the walls and are one of the more remarkable things on the island.

Gozo is a full day and needs an early start: bus or taxi to the Ċirkewwa ferry terminal at the top of the island, twenty-five minutes across, then a bus up to Victoria where every Gozo route meets. The Citadella above the town is free to walk, its museums are not, and the view from the ramparts takes in most of the island at once. Get the timing of the return ferry into your head before you start walking about.

Practical things nobody tells you

• Buses are frequent on the main corridors and sparse on the cross-country ones. Planning around Valletta as the hub is faster than it looks on a map.
• The last connections matter more than the first. Check what time the route you need stops running before committing to a late dinner somewhere small.
• The ferries are transport, not excursions — the Sliema and Three Cities crossings are how people commute — so they are cheap and they run often.
• Nothing on this list needs to be booked in advance except, in high season, the busiest interiors.
• Sunday morning is quiet for traffic and busy for churches. Several interiors are closed to visitors during services.

What this leaves out

Three days on public transport covers the four historic towns comfortably and covers very little else. The temples on the south coast, the cliffs at Dingli, the north-west beaches and the Blue Grotto are all reachable by bus, but each is most of a day once you account for the journey.

If you have five days, the honest advice is to do the four towns in three and give the other two to the coast, rather than trying to fit the coast into the same days as the towns.

Walking them with a guide

All four towns in this plan have a self-guided audio tour on this site: Valletta, Mdina, the Three Cities and the Citadella on Gozo. Each is a route with the walking directions written out, the history narrated at the point where you can see what is being described, and the whole thing downloadable so it works with no signal, which matters more than you would expect inside a walled town.

The written guide to every stop is free to read, and one stop on each tour plays in full for nothing.