Stop 14 of 16
Il-Maċina
A bastion that became a crane, then a hotel
Keep going
Stop one of The Three Cities plays straight away. The other 15 are one payment:
- Every stop from here to The Gardjola, narrated
- The map following you from stop to stop, hands free
- The whole tour saved to your phone — no signal, no roaming
Not sure yet? Start with Vittoriosa Waterfront.
The written guide below is open either way.
Guide to Il-Maċina
A stone bastion on the corner of Senglea, built in the 1550s when Claude de la Sengle fortified the peninsula, and later the base for the sheer-legs crane that stepped masts into the Order’s and then the Royal Navy’s ships. The name means simply the machine. It is now a hotel.
The bastion and the machine
The bastion was one of the strongpoints that held the creek in 1565. In the eighteenth century the Order set a sheer-legs on top of it, a huge timber crane like a pair of scissors standing on end, to lower masts into ships warped in below. Every navy needed one; this was Malta’s, and the Royal Navy kept it in use long after the Order had gone.
Città Invicta
Senglea was the second town the Ottomans could not take in 1565, defended from Fort St Michael at the neck of the peninsula, and was renamed Città Invicta afterwards. In 1941 and 1942 it was the closest town to the dockyard and was almost destroyed. Nearly everything on the climb to the basilica has been rebuilt since, the bastion included, most recently as a hotel.
What to look at
- The sloping bastion face at the base, the sixteenth-century part
- The corner position, commanding both the creek and the open harbour
- Valletta’s bastions directly across the water
Practical
- Terrain
- A long flight of steps from here up to the basilica. The Senglea ferry landing is nearby at water level if you would rather stop.
- Access
- A hotel; exterior only.
Walk to stop 15 · Senglea Basilica
Climb the steps beside Il-Maċina into Senglea's streets and follow the mapped line up to the basilica square. This is the steepest part of the walk.
About 5 min · 306 m