Stop 10 of 15
Howard Gardens & the Walls
Mdina from below
Keep going
Stop one of Mdina plays straight away. The other 14 are one payment:
- Every stop from here to St Agatha’s Crypt & Catacombs, 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 Mdina Gate & the Ditch.
The written guide below is open either way.
Guide to Howard Gardens & the Walls
A public garden beneath the western bastions of Mdina, laid out in the 1920s and named for Joseph Howard, Malta’s first prime minister. From here the walls show the full height of the rock they stand on, and the shape of the ridge that made the city worth holding is easiest to read.
The walls from below
The bastions above the gardens are the western face of the city, rebuilt in the 1720s in the same campaign that produced the main gate and Vilhena Palace. Inside the walls Mdina feels small; from here it reads as the fortress it was.
Inside the Roman city, outside the Arab one
The gardens stand on ground that lay within Roman Melite and outside the smaller Arab city, in the suburb, the rabat, that grew up when the walls were pulled back to the ridge in the eleventh century.
Mdina occupies a hump of harder rock at the western edge of the island’s central plateau. To the north and east the ground drops as a cliff; to the south and west it falls more gently, which is where the farms, quarries and cemeteries lay, and where an attacker would come from. That is why this side has the deeper ditch.
What to look at
- The join between the natural rock and the masonry at the base of the bastions
- The Greeks Gate above, small in the length of wall
- Mtarfa on the ridge across the valley to the west, with its clock tower
Practical
- Facilities
- Benches and shade; toilets and cafés are in Rabat, a few minutes on.
- Terrain
- Gentle paths; a short slope down from the Greeks Gate.
Walk to stop 11 · The Domus Romana
Follow the garden path along the foot of the walls to Museum Street. The Domus Romana is the low building with the classical front at the far end; stand in the forecourt.
About 2 min · 112 m