Villegaignon Street

This is the opposite of Valletta. There the Knights laid out a grid so troops could move fast and guns could fire down a straight line. Here the lanes are short, curving and overlooked, so an enemy who got past the walls would find no sightlines and no room to bring numbers to bear.

Every corner is a place to be surprised from. The shade the bends throw across the pavement in August is a bonus.

The street is named after a sixteenth-century French knight and it is the processional route and the best address in the city. Most of the buildings along it are noble houses.

Look at the door knockers: heavy bronze, usually a dolphin or a lion, always in pairs. Then look up at the gallariji, the enclosed wooden balconies that are Malta's signature — the ones here are older and plainer than Valletta's. Behind them the houses run deep around internal courtyards, which is how a stone house stays cool through a Maltese summer.

Somewhere between two and three hundred people live inside the walls. Residents' cars are the only cars, there are no buses, and once the last coach party has gone in the late afternoon the streets empty completely.

If you can come back after dark, do. Mdina at night is one of the strangest and best hours on the island.