Stop 06 of 16
The Norman House
The oldest house in Birgu
Free to hear. You have 3 of three free stops left, on any tours.
Guide to The Norman House
A small house on North Street in Birgu with a thirteenth-century double window, the oldest domestic building in the town and three centuries older than the auberges the Knights built around it. It is restored and opened as a small museum.
Birgu before the Knights
Until 1530 Birgu was a village of fishermen and traders beneath the castle, ruled from Sicily, whose better houses followed the Sicilian pattern: a plain wall to the street, a decorated window on the upper floor, everything else turned inward around a yard. The two-light window divided by a slender column is the signature of the style, called Siculo-Norman after the dynasty that ruled Sicily and Malta from the eleventh century.
A town requisitioned
The Order did not clear the village when it arrived; it took the village over. The auberges of the Collachio were built among houses like this one, and for forty years the Knights’ grandees lived in a medieval Maltese town before Valletta let them build to their own taste.
The house survives because it was too small to demolish and too plain to alter. Its owners have restored it and open it as a small museum.
What to look at
- The two-light window on the first floor, with its slender central column
- The plain wall below it — decoration went upstairs, where it could be seen and not touched
- The same window form on Palazzo Falson in Mdina, if you have done that walk
Practical
- Visiting
- Open at limited hours with a small admission charge; the window is best seen from the street.
- Terrain
- Level; a few steps in the lane beside the house.
Walk to stop 07 · The Inquisitor's Palace
Follow the mapped line out of the Collachio to Main Gate Street. The Inquisitor's Palace is the long plain building with the modest door; listen from the street outside.
About 3 min · 151 m
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