How it works
A guide in your ear, and nobody to keep up with
It is a website, not an app. You read it free, hear a stop free, and buy the recording only if you want to be walked round rather than to read. Here is the whole thing, in order.
- 01
Read it before you go, for nothing
Every stop on every tour is published in full — the history, what to look at when you get there, and the walk to the next one. No account, no email address, no paywall halfway down the page. Plan the whole day off it if you like.
- 02
Listen to a real stop, also for nothing
One stop on each tour plays in full, free, for ever. It is a stop from the middle of the product rather than a trailer, so you find out what the writing and the voice are actually like before deciding anything.
- 03
Buy the tour if you want the rest of it
One payment for one tour, or one for all of them. It unlocks immediately in the browser you are in — no password to choose, no app to install, nothing emailed to you that you have to find again.
- 04
Download it before you set off
One button saves the whole tour into your browser. After that it works in flight mode: no roaming, no dead spots underground, and nothing buffering while you stand in front of the thing you came to see.
- 05
Walk it at your own pace
Turn on the guided mode and the map follows you, offering each stop as you reach it, hands in pockets. Or ignore all that and press play at each stop yourself. Stop for lunch in the middle and come back tomorrow — it remembers where you were.
Step two takes about 3 minutes and costs nothing.
Listen to City Gate & the DitchAgainst a guided walking tour
| What is being compared | This guide | A guided walk |
|---|---|---|
| Starts | Whenever you arrive | At a fixed time you must not miss |
| Pace | Yours. Stop, double back, sit down | The group’s |
| If you are late | Nothing happens | You have lost the tour |
| Group size | You, and whoever you brought | Fifteen to forty strangers |
| Hearing it | In your ear, at your volume | Over traffic, from the back |
| Repeat it | As often as you like, for ever | Once |
| Cost for two | One purchase, shared | Two tickets |
| A live guide | No. This is the trade | Yes — and a good one is worth it |
What you get, and what you don’t
Included
- Narration for every stop on the tour, written for headphones and addressed to where you are standing.
- A map that follows you as you walk, with the route traced along real streets rather than drawn straight through buildings.
- The whole thing downloadable before you set off, so it plays with no signal, no data and no roaming.
- Every later version of the tour — added stops, corrections, re-recordings — at no further cost.
- No expiry, no subscription and no app to install. One payment, and it is yours.
Not included
- Admission to anything. Cathedrals, forts and museums charge their own entry, we take no cut of it, and the walk works from the street without going into any of them.
- A person walking with you. Nobody meets you, nobody counts heads, and there is no departure time to be late for. That is the trade.
- Transport to the start, or between the towns. You walk it.
- A human voice. The words are researched and written by a person; the narration is read by a text-to-speech model, and you should know that before paying rather than after.
What you need
- A phone with a browser. Anything from the last few years, iPhone or Android alike.
- Headphones, ideally one earbud rather than two — these are streets with traffic in them.
- Comfortable shoes. Malta is limestone, and centuries of feet have polished it.
- Water, and a hat between May and September. There is less shade than you expect.
Short on time? Victoria & the Citadella is the shortest of the four — allow 45 to 75 minutes. See the route.