Palazzo Falson

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.

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.

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.