A thread across the walks
The Knights of St John
Two hundred and sixty-eight years of a military order that ran an island
The Order of St John arrived in Malta in 1530 with nowhere else to go and left in 1798 without a fight. In between it built two cities, a ring of fortifications, a hospital, a fleet and most of what a visitor now comes to see. This thread follows the Order from the creek it landed in at Birgu, through the city it built at Valletta, to the towers and the town it rebuilt in the country, and ends where its rule did, on a doorstep in Mdina.
Who they were
The Order began in Jerusalem in the eleventh century as a hospice for pilgrims, took up arms in the twelfth, and after the fall of the crusader states ran a naval war against the Ottomans from Rhodes for two centuries. Its members were noblemen from across Catholic Europe, organised by language into eight langues, each with its own auberge, or hall, and each holding one of the great offices of the Order in turn.
They were monks in the sense that they took vows, and soldiers in every other sense. The hospital was the stated purpose; the galleys were the daily work; and the Grand Master, elected for life, was a sovereign prince.
What they built
Birgu first, out of the fishing village under the castle, with the auberges crammed into a few streets. Then, after 1565, Valletta, laid out whole on the ridge across the harbour with a straight street for every langue and a church at its heart. Then, for two hundred years, walls: around the Three Cities, around Valletta, around Mdina after the earthquake of 1693, and along the coast in a chain of towers built so that each could see the next.
And, less visibly, institutions. The infirmary that took in the sick regardless of faith and fed them off silver. The school of anatomy. The theatre. A legal system with an Inquisitor to keep the Order itself in check. By the eighteenth century the island had the buildings of a European capital and the population of a provincial town.
How it ended
By the 1790s the Order was rich, idle and divided, its French knights ruined by the Revolution and its purpose gone with the Ottoman threat. Napoleon arrived in June 1798 on his way to Egypt, demanded the harbour, and was given the island within days. The Knights left. Three months later the Maltese rose against the French, on the doorstep of a church in Mdina, and asked the British for help. The Order survives, in Rome, as a sovereign entity with no country and a great many hospitals, and keeps a corner of Fort St Angelo.
The stops, walk by walk
Each walk below can be opened filtered to this thread alone: the map keeps only these stops and the directions run straight between them. The written guide to every stop is free; the narration is part of that walk’s audio.
The Three Cities
6 stops · 60–105 min · 2.8 km
- Vittoriosa Waterfront
Where the Order landed in 1530 and kept its galleys.
- Fort St Angelo
The first headquarters, and the corner the Order still holds.
- St Lawrence's Church
The conventual church before St John’s was built.
- The Collachio
The first auberges, in a few requisitioned streets.
- The Inquisitor's Palace
The tribunal that kept the Order itself in check.
- Cospicua & the Cottonera Lines
The outer walls, the most ambitious fortification the Order undertook.
Valletta
10 stops · 105–150 min · 3.9 km
- City Gate & the Ditch
The city the Order built from nothing after 1565.
- Auberge d’Italie & MUŻA
The Italian langue, which supplied the admiral of the fleet.
- Auberge de Castille
The grandest auberge, rebuilt in the Order’s baroque century.
- Upper Barrakka Gardens
The Italian knights’ private garden, opened to the public.
- Republic Street & the Auberge de Provence
One of the few auberges to survive largely intact.
- St John's Co-Cathedral
The conventual church: a plain fortress outside, the Order’s wealth inside.
- The Grandmaster's Palace
Where the Grand Masters governed for two centuries.
- The Manoel Theatre
A Grand Master’s gift to the town, still working.
- Auberge d’Aragon
The oldest auberge, and the least altered.
- The Sacra Infermeria
The hospital that was the Order’s stated purpose.
Mdina
4 stops · 30–45 min · 1 km
- Mdina Gate & the Ditch
The old capital rebuilt by the Order after the earthquake of 1693.
- Vilhena Palace & the Standard Tower
A Grand Master’s summer palace, in French taste.
- The Carmelite Priory
The doorstep where the Maltese rose against the French three months after the Order left.
- The Greeks Gate
Where refugees from Rhodes may have settled with the Order in 1530.
Victoria & the Citadella
2 stops · 15–30 min · 0.7 km
- The Citadella Gate
The refuge Gozo was required by law to sleep inside, rebuilt after the raid of 1551.
- Taħt is-Sur
The bastioned walls the Order built from 1599.
Ħaġar Qim & Mnajdra
2 stops · 45–75 min · 2.6 km
- The Ħamrija Tower
One of the thirteen watchtowers De Redin built around the coast in 1659.
- Wied iż-Żurrieq
The Xutu tower of 1638, from the earlier chain.