Stop 01 of 10
Mdina Gate & the Ditch
A front door built to be photographed
Narration · 3 min
Have it read to you while you look at the thing itself, hands in pockets.
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Guide to Mdina Gate & the Ditch
Mdina is entered over a bridge across a ditch that is far too big for the town behind it, because the town used to be three times the size. The gate itself is an eighteenth-century piece of theatre, built to announce a Grand Master rather than to keep anyone out.
Four thousand years on one ridge
Settlement here goes back roughly four millennia. The Phoenicians had a town on the ridge; the Romans turned it into a proper city called Melite, with forum, temples and villas, spread over about three times the footprint of today's Mdina.
The island fell to the Aghlabid Arabs in 870. Around 1048 the city was pulled back to a defensible core: the ditch was cut across the ridge and everything beyond the new wall was left outside as a suburb. The Arabic word for suburb is rabat, and the town on the other side of the bridge still carries it as its name. The city itself kept the other word — medina, the city, which became Mdina.
A gate built to be photographed
The present gate dates from 1724, designed by the French military engineer Charles François de Mondion for Grand Master Manoel de Vilhena, who was rebuilding Mdina after an earthquake and wanted the entrance to say so. Vilhena's coat of arms sits above the arch.
To the right of the bridge, the blocked outline of the medieval gate it replaced is still legible — smaller, plainer and a good deal more nervous. On the inner face, above the arch, stand Saint Publius, Saint Paul and Saint Agatha, the city's patrons; all three recur along this walk.
The gate also stood in for the entrance to King's Landing in the first season of Game of Thrones, which is why it looks familiar to a certain kind of visitor.
What to look at
- Vilhena’s coat of arms over the outer arch, held by stone lions
- The blocked medieval gateway a few metres to the right of the current one
- The three patron saints carved on the inner face, watching you arrive
Practical
- Getting here
- Buses from Valletta take about 30 minutes to the Rabat terminus, a five-minute walk away.
- Cars
- Only residents may drive inside. The city is walked, and the surface is uneven.
Walk to stop 02
Walk straight in. The passage opens almost immediately into a small square with a squat round tower on your right and a long palace facade on your left.
About 1 min · 70 m