Stop 09 of 12
The Congreve Memorial & Filfla
A governor buried at sea, and an island used for target practice
Keep going
Stop one of Ħaġar Qim & Mnajdra plays straight away. The other 11 are one payment:
- Every stop from here to Wied iż-Żurrieq, narrated
- The map following you from stop to stop, hands free
- The whole tour saved to your phone — no signal, no roaming
Not sure yet? Start with The Visitor Centre & the Ridge.
The written guide below is open either way.
Guide to The Congreve Memorial & Filfla
A stone memorial on the cliff edge marks the spot from which the burial at sea of Sir Walter Congreve, Governor of Malta, was watched in 1927; the water between here and Filfla is the Congreve Channel. Filfla, a kilometre-long limestone plateau five kilometres out, was a British target range from the 1880s to 1971 and has been a nature reserve since 1988, with its own subspecies of lizard and a great colony of storm petrels.
The governor
Sir Walter Congreve, a Boer War Victoria Cross who lost a hand in the First World War, governed Malta from 1924 and died in office in February 1927. At his own request he was buried at sea in the channel between Malta and Filfla, from a warship, watched from these cliffs. The channel took his name and the memorial marks the viewpoint.
Filfla
The island is about a kilometre long and sixty metres high, uninhabited, with a chapel in a cave until an earthquake collapsed it in 1856. From the 1880s until 1971 it served as a target for naval guns and bombing practice, which ragged its outline and left unexploded ordnance that still keeps people off. It has been a nature reserve since 1988, home to a subspecies of wall lizard found nowhere else and to one of the largest storm petrel colonies in the Mediterranean. Landing is prohibited.
What to look at
- Filfla’s ragged silhouette, the result of decades of shelling
- The stretch of sea in front of you, the Congreve Channel
- Storm petrels at dusk in summer, low over the water
Practical
- Safety
- The cliff is unfenced and undercut in places. Stay on the path and well back from the edge.
- Terrain
- Rough cliff-top track from Mnajdra and on to the tower.
Walk to stop 10 · The Ħamrija Tower
Follow the cliff path east along the edge. The square tower on the headland is the next stop; keep well back from the edge where the path narrows.
About 4 min · 251 m