Stop 05 of 10
Palazzo Falson
A house from before the Knights
Narration · 3 min
Have it read to you while you look at the thing itself, hands in pockets.
3 of 3 free listens remaining · unlock every tour
Guide to Palazzo Falson
Palazzo Falson is the oldest house you can go inside in Mdina, with origins in the thirteenth century and a substantial fifteenth-century rebuild. Its last owner filled it with a lifetime of collecting and left the lot as a museum, so it survives as a house that was genuinely lived in rather than dressed to look that way.
A house from before the baroque
Nearly everything else on this walk is eighteenth century. This is not. Set it against its neighbours and the differences are structural: small high windows, a thick and largely blank wall at street level, and carving concentrated into a few openings instead of spread across a facade.
That is a house built when defence still started at your own front door. It is often called the Norman House, which is not quite accurate — the detailing is Sicilian Gothic — but the label has been attached for well over a century.
Captain Gollcher's collection
Olof Frederick Gollcher was a Maltese-Swedish artist, sailor and inexhaustible collector who bought the house in 1927 and spent the rest of his life filling it. On his death he left everything as a museum.
The rooms have been kept as he had them: silver, armour, paintings, coins, oriental rugs, a library of some five thousand books, and a kitchen with the pots still hanging.
Worth the entry
If you go inside one building in Mdina besides the cathedral, this is the strongest candidate.
The roof terrace looks out over the northern half of Malta, and most visitors never get up there.
What to look at
- The double-light windows with slender central columns — Sicilian Gothic, not Norman
- The blank lower wall: a defensive habit that outlived the danger
- Inside, the kitchen and the library, left as Gollcher used them
Practical
- Museum
- Palazzo Falson Historic House Museum, closed Mondays. Audio guide included in the ticket.
- Time
- Allow 45 minutes.
Walk to stop 06
Continue to the end of the street. It finishes at the city wall, where a broad terrace opens out over the edge.
About 1 min · 80 m