Stop 24 of 25
The Sacra Infermeria
The hospital that was the point of the Order
Keep going
Stop one of Valletta plays straight away. The other 24 are one payment:
- Every stop from here to The Siege Bell & Lower Barrakka, 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 City Gate & the Ditch.
The written guide below is open either way.
Guide to The Sacra Infermeria
The Order of St John was a hospital before it was an army, and this long building sloping towards the Grand Harbour was its hospital from 1574. Its Great Ward, over 150 metres long under one roof, was among the longest rooms in Europe; patients ate off silver and were admitted regardless of religion. It is now the Mediterranean Conference Centre.
Hospitallers first
The Order began in Jerusalem in the eleventh century as a hospice for pilgrims, and the care of the sick remained its stated purpose through five centuries of fighting. The infirmary was begun in 1574, within a decade of the city itself.
Every knight, the Grand Master included, was expected to serve in the wards. Patients had a bed each, which in the sixteenth century was remarkable, and ate off silver plate because silver was believed cleaner than pewter or wood.
Anatomy and surgery
Grand Master Nicolas Cotoner founded a school of anatomy and surgery here in 1676, one of the ancestors of the island’s medical school. The dissections took place in the building and the bodies came from the wards.
The Nurse of the Mediterranean
Under the British it remained a military hospital, and in the First World War the Gallipoli campaign sent well over a hundred thousand sick and wounded men through Malta’s hospitals, of which this was the largest. Bombing in the Second World War and years as a police headquarters followed.
The building was restored and reopened in 1979 as the Mediterranean Conference Centre, with the Great Ward as its main hall. When no conference is sitting it can usually be seen on request.
What to look at
- The length of the building — walk along it and count your paces
- The plain sixteenth-century masonry, undecorated and unrebuilt
- The slope: the wards stepped down the hill towards the harbour, and the lower ones were the coolest
Practical
- Visiting
- A working conference centre; the Great Ward can usually be seen on request when not in use. The Malta Experience audiovisual show next door charges admission.
- Terrain
- Mediterranean Street slopes gently downhill towards the Siege Bell.
Walk to stop 25 · The Siege Bell & Lower Barrakka
Keep going down Mediterranean Street with the harbour on your left. The colonnaded memorial and the bell are ahead on the bastion.
About 3 min · 140 m