Stop 08 of 15
Mesquita Square
The medieval quarter, and a television gate
Free to hear. You have 3 of three free stops left, on any tours.
Guide to Mesquita Square
A small square in the oldest quarter of Mdina, ringed by houses with the small, high windows of the medieval city and the narrowest lanes in the town. It is named for a noble family, keeps the last of the pre-Knights street plan, and its lanes stood in for the streets of King’s Landing in the first series of Game of Thrones.
The oldest street plan
The lanes off the square are the narrowest in Mdina and keep the layout of the Arab and Norman town, which the eighteenth-century rebuilding never reached. The houses have thick walls and small, high windows, built when defence began at the front door.
Several of the older houses in this quarter keep the twin windows divided by a slender column seen at Palazzo Falson: the Siculo-Gothic style of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, when Malta was governed from Sicily. It is the one architectural language in the city older than the Knights.
Named for a family
The square is named for the Mesquita family, whose palace stood here. Mdina’s squares and streets carry family names rather than saints’ or battles’ because for most of its history the city was a closed society of a dozen or so noble houses who married each other and held its offices in turn.
King’s Landing
The first series of Game of Thrones was filmed on Malta in 2010 and screened the following year, and the lanes around this square stood in for the streets of King’s Landing. The production moved to Croatia after that season; the visitors stayed.
What to look at
- The narrowest lane in the city, leading off the square
- Twin windows divided by a slender column on the older houses
- The absence of anything eighteenth-century — this corner missed the rebuilding
Practical
- Terrain
- Level, but the lanes are narrow and uneven underfoot.
- Quiet
- People live in these houses. Voices carry.
Walk to stop 09 · The Greeks Gate
Take the lane out of the square towards the western walls, along Mesquita Street and St Nicholas Street. The small gate in the wall ahead is the Greeks Gate.
About 2 min · 126 m
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