The Manoel Theatre

Grand Master António Manoel de Vilhena funded the building himself. Carved above the entrance is the phrase ad honestam populi oblectationem, which translates as the honest recreation of the people.

Generosity was not the whole of it. A fortress city stiff with knights, soldiers, sailors and merchants needed an evening destination that was not a tavern, and not Strait Street.

Three tiers of gilded and painted boxes wrap tightly around a stage barely wider than a large room. The scale is the pleasure of it: no seat is far from the actors, and the wooden shell makes it sound superb.

It is one of the finest small rooms for baroque music anywhere in Europe.

The theatre has not always been treated kindly. It was reduced to a dance hall in the early twentieth century, then a cinema, and came close to going the way of the Royal Opera House.

Purchase by the Maltese government in the 1950s, and a restoration after it, gave the building back its purpose: it reopened in 1960 as the national theatre. Take a seat at a performance if one is running; if not, the daytime tours of the auditorium last about a quarter of an hour.