A thread across the walks

The Great Siege of 1565

Four months that decided who held the middle of the Mediterranean

In the summer of 1565 an Ottoman force of some forty thousand men landed on Malta to destroy the Knights of St John. The Knights and the Maltese, somewhere between six and nine thousand in all, held two small towns and a fort on the harbour for close to four months until a relief force landed in September. Almost everything on these walks was built, or rebuilt, because of it. This thread follows the siege across Birgu, Senglea, Valletta and Mdina, in the order the ground makes sense.

What was at stake

The Order of St John had been thrown out of Rhodes by the Ottomans in 1522 and given Malta in 1530. From the harbour here its galleys raided Ottoman shipping for thirty years, and by 1565 Suleiman the Magnificent had decided to finish the job he had started at Rhodes. The fleet that arrived in May carried an army several times the size of anything the island could put in the field.

The Knights held three positions: Fort St Angelo and the town of Birgu behind it, the peninsula of Senglea beside it with Fort St Michael at its neck, and Fort St Elmo on the far side of the harbour, at the tip of the empty ridge where Valletta now stands. Mdina, inland, held the cavalry and the island’s reserve.

How it went

The Ottoman commanders chose to take St Elmo first, to open the harbour to their fleet. They expected days; it took a month, and the fort fell on 23 June with almost every defender dead. The cost in Ottoman lives and time was the turning point, though nobody knew it then.

The rest of the summer went into assaults on Senglea and Birgu, by land and by boats across the creek, against walls that were repaired each night. A sortie by the Mdina cavalry against the Ottoman field hospital broke one of the largest assaults. On 7 September a relief force from Sicily landed in the north of the island, and the besiegers, exhausted and short of everything, re-embarked.

What it left

The obvious legacy is Valletta, founded within a year on the ridge St Elmo had been defending, and named for the Grand Master who had held the siege together. The less obvious one is everything else: the walls of Birgu and Senglea, thickened and extended for the next two centuries; the towers around the coast; the annual celebration on 8 September, still a public holiday; and a habit of building for the next attack that Malta never entirely lost.

The thread below runs through the Three Cities, where the fighting was, then Valletta, which is the consequence, then Mdina, which watched. Any of the three can be walked on its own as a themed route.

The stops, walk by walk

Each walk below can be opened filtered to this thread alone: the map keeps only these stops and the directions run straight between them. The written guide to every stop is free; the narration is part of that walk’s audio.

Le Tre Città

8 stops · 120–180 min · 5.7 km

  1. Il lungomare di Vittoriosa

    The creek the Knights fortified in 1530 and defended with a chain across its mouth.

  2. Forte Sant’Angelo

    The Order’s headquarters and the anchor of the whole defence.

  3. Chiesa di San Lorenzo

    The conventual church during the siege, where the wounded were brought and the dead buried.

  4. Victory Square

    Named for the outcome; the monument records the town’s part in it.

  5. La Couvre Porte e il fronte di terra

    The land front the assaults came against, rebuilt afterwards for the next time.

  6. Il-Maċina

    A bastion of the 1550s that held Senglea’s corner against the boat attacks.

  7. La Basilica di Senglea

    Senglea, renamed Città Invicta, the unconquered city, for holding out.

  8. La Gardjola

    The point of Senglea, looking across to where St Elmo fell.

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La Valletta

5 stops · 90–135 min · 3.8 km

  1. La Porta della Città e il fossato

    The city founded in 1566 because the siege had proved the ridge had to be held.

  2. Nostra Signora della Vittoria

    The first building of the new city, on the spot where its foundation stone was laid.

  3. Piazza del Grande Assedio

    The monument to the siege, in the centre of the city it produced.

  4. Il Palazzo del Gran Maestro

    The frescoes of the siege painted for the Grand Masters who came after it.

  5. Forte Sant’Elmo e il Museo della Guerra

    Where the siege turned: a month’s resistance that cost the Ottomans the summer.

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Mdina

2 stops · 15–30 min · 0.5 km

  1. La Porta di Mdina e il fossato

    The old capital held the island’s reserve and the cavalry that broke the assault on Senglea.

  2. Bastion Square

    The view north, where the relief force landed in September 1565.

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